a nobility of character which gives me the highest hopes of
his future." But up to his twenty-fourth year nothing seemed more
unlikely than that he should have any vocation to a holy life. He was
called the "flower of the youth" of Assisi, rejoiced in his gay
leadership of the rich young men of the place, and dreamed of winning
military glory.

In this capacity of taking the lead, and in the confident belief he
often expressed that he would one day receive honor from the world, we
see one natural germ of his later spiritual eminence. Another and more
potent germ was the love of the poor, and his pity for them, which he
manifested from childhood. In 1201, taking part as a soldier in a brief
war between Assisi and Perugia, he was captured, with several of his
companions, and imprisoned for a year. This experience, his first touch
of adversity, sobered him a little; opening his eyes to the contrast
between prosperity, with idle amusement and flattery, on the one hand,
and on the other, suffering. Soon after his return home, also, he was
stricken down by a long and painful illness. When he rose from it and,
as a convalescent, took his first walk into the country, he was
astonished to find that the beautiful Umbrian landscape which he had
always so enjoyed, seemed to him cold, discolored, and sombre. A natural
effect of illness, one may say. Yet it more often happens that when a
convalescent returns to fresh air and the beauty of the earth, his
pleasure in them is heightened. At all events Francis was vividly
impressed with the nothingness of nature, as compared with the eternal
splendor of God. But presently the passion for warlike renown took
possession of him again. In 1206 he volunteered to join the Count of
Brienne, a Guelph champion of Italian national independence, who was
defending the Two Sicilies against the attacks of the German emperor,
Frederick II. Announcing to his friends that he was about to become a
great captain, Francis set out for the field of war, richly apparelled
and with a brilliant retinue.

In truth he was shortly to become a great captain, though not as he
expected, in war, but in peace. On the way to Spoleto, southward, a
voice that seemed to come from heaven sounded in his ears; just as Saul
was appealed to while on his way to Damascus and was converted by it
into _St. Paul_. To the young Umbrian, half asleep, the voice said:
"Francis, which can do thee most good; the master or the servant, the