In 1210, with eleven companions, his entire band, Francis went to Rome to secure papal sanction.  Pope Innocent III. was walking in a garden of the Lateran Palace when a beggar, dusty and pale, confronted him.  Provoked at being disturbed in his thoughts, he drove him away.  That night it was the pope’s turn to dream.  He saw a falling church supported by a poor and miserable man.  Of course, that man was Francis.  Four or five years later the pope will dream the same thing again.  Then the poor man will be Dominic.  In the morning he sent for the monk whom he had driven from him as a madman the day before.  Standing before his holiness and the college of cardinals, Francis pleaded his cause in a touching and eloquent parable.  His quiet, earnest manner and clear blue eyes impressed every one.  The pope did not give him formal sanction however—­this was left for Honorius III., November 29, 1223—­but he verbally permitted him to establish his order and to continue his preaching.

Several times Francis set out to preach to the Mohammedans, but failed to reach his destination.  He finally visited Egypt during the siege of Damietta, and at the risk of his life he went forth to preach to the sultan encamped on the Nile.  He is described by an eye-witness “as an ignorant and simple man, beloved of God and men.”  His courage and personal magnetism won the Mohammedan’s sympathy but not his soul.  Although Francis courted martyrdom, and offered to walk through fire to prove the truth of his message, the Oriental took it all too good-naturedly to put him to the test, and dismissed him with kindness.

Francis was a great lover of birds.  The swallows he called his sisters.  A bird in the cage excited his deepest sympathy.  It is said he sometimes preached to the feathered songsters.  Longfellow has cast one of these homilies into poetic form: 

     “O brother birds, St. Francis said,
     Ye come to me and ask for bread,
     But not with bread alone to-day
     Shall ye be fed and sent away.

* * * * *

     Oh, doubly are ye bound to praise
     The great Creator in your lays;
     He giveth you your plumes of down,
     Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

     He giveth you your wings to fly
     And breathe a purer air on high,
     And careth for you everywhere,
     Who for yourselves so little care.”

Like all ascetics, Francis was tempted in visions.  One cold night he fancied he was in a home of his own, with his wife and children around him.  Rushing out of his cell he heaped up seven hills of snow to represent a wife, four sons and daughters, and two servants.  “Make haste,” he cried, “provide clothing for them lest they perish with the cold,” and falling upon the imaginary group, he dispelled the vision of domestic bliss in the cold embrace of the winter’s snow.  Mrs. Oliphant points out the fact that, unlike most of the hermits