garments a little warmer. One day his
companion came home with a fox-skin, with which in his turn he proposed
to line his master's tunic. Francis rejoiced much over it, but would
permit this excess of consideration for his body only on condition that
the piece of fur should be placed on the outside over his chest.

All these incidents, almost insignificant at a first view, show how he
detested hypocrisy even in the smallest things.

We will not follow him to his dear Greccio,[11] nor even to the
hermitage of St. Urbano, perched on one of the highest peaks of the
Sabine.[12] The accounts which we have of the brief visits he made
there at this time tell us nothing new of his character or of the
history of his life. They simply show that the imaginations of those who
surrounded him were extraordinarily overheated; the least incidents
immediately took on a miraculous coloring.[13]

The documents do not say how it came about that he decided to go to
Sienna. It appears that there was in that city a physician of great fame
as an oculist. The treatment he prescribed was no more successful than
that of the others; but with the return of spring Francis made a new
effort to return to active life. We find him describing the ideal
Franciscan monastery,[14] and another day explaining a passage in the
Bible to a Dominican.

Did the latter, a doctor in theology, desire to bring the rival Order
into ridicule by showing its founder incapable of explaining a somewhat
difficult verse? It appears extremely likely. "My good father," he said,
"how do you understand this saying of the prophet Ezekiel, 'If thou dost
not warn the wicked of his wickedness, I will require his soul of thee?'
I am acquainted with many men whom I know to be in a state of mortal
sin, and yet I am not always reproaching them for their vices. Am I,
then, responsible for their souls?"

At first Francis excused himself, alleging his ignorance, but urged by
his interlocutor he said at last: "Yes, the true servant unceasingly
rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, by the
truth which shines forth in his words, by the light of his example, by
all the radiance of his life."[15]

He soon suffered so grave a relapse that the Brothers thought his last
hour had come. They were especially affrighted by the hemorrhages, which
reduced him to a state of extreme prostration. Brother Elias hastened to
him. At his arrival the invalid felt in himself such an