not leave him. "Alas, good Father," said one
of them to him, unable longer to contain himself, "your children are
going to lose you, and be deprived of the true light which lightened
them: think of the orphans you are leaving and forgive all their faults,
give to them all, present and absent, the joy of your holy benediction."

"See," replied the dying man, "God is calling me. I forgive all my
Brothers, present and absent, their offences and faults, and absolve
them according to my power. Tell them so, and bless them all in my
name."[23]

Then crossing his arms he laid his hands upon those who surrounded him.
He did this with peculiar emotion to Bernard of Quintavalle: "I desire,"
he said, "and with all my power I urge whomsoever shall be
minister-general of the Order, to love and honor him as myself; let the
provincials and all the Brothers act toward him as toward me."[24]

He thought not only of the absent Brothers but of the future ones; love
so abounded in him that it wrung from him a groan of regret for not
seeing all those who should enter the Order down to the end of time,
that he might lay his hand upon their brows, and make them feel those
things that may only be spoken by the eyes of him who loves in God.[25]

He had lost the notion of time; believing that it was still Thursday he
desired to take a last meal with his disciples. Some bread was brought,
he broke it and gave it to them, and there in the poor cabin of
Portiuncula, without altar and without a priest, was celebrated the
Lord's Supper.[26]

A Brother read the Gospel for Holy Thursday, _Ante diem festum Paschae_:
"Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that his hour was come
to go from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in
the world he loved them unto the end."

The sun was gilding the crests of the mountains with his last rays,
there was silence around the dying one. All was ready. The angel of
death might come.

Saturday, October 3, 1226, at nightfall, without pain, without struggle,
he breathed the last sigh.

The Brothers were still gazing on his face, hoping yet to catch some
sign of life, when innumerable larks alighted, singing, on the thatch of
his cell,[27] as if to salute the soul which had just taken flight and
give the Little Poor Man the canonization of which he was most worthy,
the only one, doubtless, which he would ever have coveted.

On the morrow, at dawn, the Assisans came down to take posses