his sentence.[25]

The agonies of grief endured by the dying Francis over the decadence of
the Order would have been less poignant if they had not been mingled
with self-reproaches for his own cowardice. Why had he deserted his
post, given up the direction of his family, if not from idleness and
selfishness? And now it was too late to take back this step; and in
hours of frightful anguish he asked himself if God would not hold him
responsible for this subversion of his ideal.

"Ah, if I could go once again to the chapter-general," he would sigh, "I
would show them what my will is."

Shattered as he was by fever, he would suddenly rise up in his bed,
crying with a despairing intensity: "Where are they who have ravished
my brethren from me? Where are they who have stolen away my family?"

Alas, the real criminals were nearer to him than he thought. The
provincial ministers, of whom he appears to have been thinking when he
thus spoke, were only instruments in the hands of the clever Brother
Elias; and he--what else was he doing but putting his intelligence and
address at Cardinal Ugolini's service?

Far from finding any consolation in those around him, Francis was
constantly tortured by the confidences of his companions, who, impelled
by mistaken zeal, aggravated his pain instead of calming it.[26]

"Forgive me, Father," said one of them to him one day, "but many
people have already thought what I am going to say to you. You
know how, in the early days, by God's grace the Order walked in
the path of perfection; for all that concerns poverty and love,
as well as for all the rest, the Brothers were but one heart and
one soul. But for some time past all that is entirely changed:
it is true that people often excuse the Brothers by saying that
the Order has grown too large to keep up the old observances;
they even go so far as to claim that infidelities to the Rule,
such as the building of great monasteries, are a means of
edification of the people, and so the primitive simplicity and
poverty are held for nothing. Evidently all these abuses are
displeasing to you; but then, people ask, why do you tolerate
them?"

"God forgive you, brother." replied Francis. "Why do you lay at
my door things with which I have nothing to do? So long as I had
the direction of the Order, and the Brothers persevered in their
vocation I was able, in spite of weakness, to