of Naples could not do as much. He gesticulates, throws
himself about, hustles you, more enthusiastic over his relic and more
exasperated by your coldness than a soldier of the Old Guard before an
enemy of the Emperor.

In the thirteenth century all Europe was like that.

We shall find here several incidents which we may be tempted to consider
shocking or even ignoble, if we do not make an effort to put them all
into their proper surroundings.

Francis was installed in the bishop's palace; he would have preferred to
be at Portiuncula, but the Brothers were obliged to obey the injunctions
of the populace, and to make assurance doubly sure, guards were placed
at all the approaches of the palace.

The abode of the Saint in this place was much longer than had been
anticipated. It perhaps lasted several months (July to September). This
dying man did not consent to die. He rebelled against death; in this
centre of the work his anxieties for the future of the Order, which a
little while before had been in the background, now returned, more
agonizing and terrible than ever.

"We must begin again," he thought, "create a new family who will not
forget humility, who will go and serve lepers and, as in the old times,
put themselves always, not merely in words, but in reality, below all
men."[21]

To feel that implacable work of destruction going on against which the
most submissive cannot keep from protesting: "My God, my God, why? why
hast thou forsaken me?" To be obliged to look on at the still more
dreaded decomposition of his Order; he, the lark, to be spied upon by
soldiers watching for his corpse--there was quite enough here to make
him mortally sad.

During these last weeks all his sighs were noted. The disappearance of
the greater part of the legend of the Three Companions certainly
deprives us of some touching stories, but most of the incidents have
been preserved for us, notwithstanding, in documents from a second hand.

Four Brothers had been especially charged to lavish care upon him: Leo,
Angelo, Rufino, and Masseo. We already know them; they are of those
intimate friends of the first days, who had heard in the Franciscan
gospel a call to love and liberty. And they too began to complain of
everything.[22]

One day one of them said to the sick man: "Father, you are going away to
leave us here; point out to us, then, if you know him, the one to whom
we might in all security confide the burden of the generalshi