black beast that gripped him were loosened, and he crept back into
life as one returning from a far country.

His castle was empty save for the few terror-stricken servants who
lingered because they knew not whither to flee. In the garden withered
the rose and the lily, untended and unplucked. The chairs and couches
where he had seen the faces of his friends were vacant. On the pillows
of his great bed there were no curls of tangled gold, nor plaited
tresses of long black spread out beside him in the morning light.

The world in which he had revelled away his youth was void; and in the
unknown world, from whose threshold he had painfully escaped, but
whither he knew he must one day return, there dwelt only a horrible
fear and a certain looking for of judgment.

So Count Angelo came to life again. But all desires and passions which
had hitherto warmed or burned him were like dead embers. For the flame
of them all had gone into one desire--the resolve to die in the odour
of sanctity, and so to pass into Paradise safely and unafraid.

Therefore he put aside the fine garments which his trembling servants
brought, and clad himself in sackcloth with a girdle of rope about his
loins. Thus apparelled he climbed on foot to the holy mountain of La
Verna, above the Val d'Arno, which mountain the Count Rolando of
Montefeltro had given, many years before, to St. Francis the minstrel
of God and his poor little disciples of the cross, for a refuge and a
sanctuary near the sky. At the door of the Friary built upon the land
of his forefathers the Count Angelo knocked humbly as a beggar.

"Who is there?" said the door-keeper from his loophole.

"A poor sinner," answered Angelo, "who has no wish left in life but to
die in the odour of sanctity."

At this the door-keeper opened grudgingly, supposing he had to do with
some outcast seeking the house of religion as a last resort. But when
he saw the stranger he knew that it was the rich and generous Count of
Montefeltro.

"May it please your lordship to enter," he cried; "the guest-chamber
awaits you, and the friars minor of St. Francis will rejoice in the
presence of their patron."

"Not so," replied Angelo; "but in the meanest of your cells will I
lodge. For I am come not to bestow, but to beg, and my request is the
lowest place among the little servants of poverty."

Whereupon the door-keeper was greatly astonished, and led Angelo to
the Warden, to whom he unfolded his purpose t