the angel appeared to S. Francesco promising such great things, and it is with a certain confidence you remind yourself, yes, it is true, the Order still lives, here men still speak S. Francesco’s name and pray to God.  And there, as it is said, Jesus Himself spoke with him, and he wrote the blessing for Frate Leone.  Then you enter the Chiesina, the first little church of the Mountain that St. Francis may have built with his own hands, and that S. Bonaventura certainly enlarged; and thus into the great Church of S. Maria Assunta, built in 1348 by the Conte di Pietramala, with its beautiful della Robbias.  Coming out again, you pass along the covered way into the Cappella della Stigmata, built in 1263 by the Conte Simone da Battifolle, where behind the high altar is the great Crucifixion by one of the della Robbia.  Next to this chapel is the Cappella della Croce, where of old the cell stood in which St. Francis kept the Lent of St. Michael.  Close by are the Oratories of S. Antonio di Padua and S. Bonaventura, where they prayed and worked.  Below the Chapel of the Stigmata is the Sasso Spicco, whence the devil hurled one of the brethren.  For during that Lent, “Francis leaving his cell one day in fervour of spirit, and going aside a little to pray in a hollow of the rock, from which down to the ground is an exceeding deep descent and a horrible and fearful precipice, suddenly the devil came in terrible shape, with a tempest and exceeding loud roar, and struck at him for to push him down thence.  St. Francis, not having where to flee, and not being able to endure the grim aspect of the demon, he turned him quickly with hands and face and all his body pressed to the rock, commending himself to God and groping with his hands, if perchance he might find aught to cling to.  But as it pleased God, who suffereth not His servants to be tempted above that they are able to bear, suddenly by a miracle the rock to which he clung hollowed itself out in fashion as the shape of his body....  But that which the demon could not do then unto St. Francis ... he did a good while after the death of St. Francis unto one of his dear and pious brothers, who was setting in order some pieces of wood in the self-same place, to the end that it might be possible to cross there without peril, out of devotion to St. Francis and the miracle that was wrought there.  On a day the demon pushed him, while he had on his head a great log that he wished to set there, and made him fall down thence with the log upon his head.  But God, that had preserved and delivered St. Francis from falling, through his merits delivered and preserved his pious brother from the peril of his fall; for the brother, as he fell, with exceeding great devotion commanded himself in a loud voice to St. Francis, and straightway he appeared unto him, and, catching him, set him down upon the rocks without suffering him to feel a shock or any hurt.”  Can it have been this “pious brother” who wrote the Fioretti?  Everywhere you go in La Verna you feel that S. Francesco has been before you; and where there is no tradition to help you, surely you will make one for yourself.  Can he who loved everything that had life have failed to love, too, that world he saw from La Penna—­