ater overwhelmed the Order,
explain the disappearance of several other documents which would cast a
glimmer of poetry and joy over these sad days;[34] Francis had not
forgotten his sister-friend at St. Damian. Hearing that she had been
greatly disquieted by knowing him to be so ill, he desired to reassure
her: he still deceived himself as to his condition, and wrote to her
promising soon to go to see her.

To this assurance he added some affectionate counsels, advising her and
her companions not to go to extremes with their macerations. To set her
an example of cheerfulness he added to this letter a Laude in the
vulgar tongue which he had himself set to music.[35]

In that chamber of the episcopal palace in which he was as it were
imprisoned he had achieved a new victory, and it was doubtless that
which inspired his joy. The Bishop of Assisi, the irritable Guido,
always at war with somebody, was at this time quarrelling with the
podesta of the city; nothing more was needed to excite in the little
town a profound disquiet. Guido had excommunicated the podesta, and the
latter had issued a prohibition against selling and buying or making any
contract with ecclesiastics.

The difference grew more bitter, and no one appeared to dream of
attempting a reconciliation. We can the better understand Francis's
grief over all this by remembering that his very first effort had been
to bring peace into his native city, and that he considered the return
of Italy to union and concord to be the essential aim of his apostolate.

War in Assisi would be the final dissolution of his dream; the voice of
events crying brutally to him, "Thou hast wasted thy life!"

The dregs of this cup were spared him, thanks to an inspiration in which
breaks forth anew his natural play of imagination. To the Canticle of
the Sun he added a new strophe:

Be praised, Lord, for those who forgive for love of thee,
and bear trials and tribulations;
happy they who persevere in peace,
by thee, Most high, shall they be crowned.

Then, calling a friar, he charged him to beg the governor to betake
himself, with all the notables whom he could assemble, to the paved
square before the bishop's palace. The magistrate, to whom legend gives
the nobler part in the whole affair, at once yielded to the saint's
request.

When he arrived and the bishop had come forth from the palace,
two friars came forward and said: "Brother Francis has made to
the