A few nights later, however, no song of any revellers was heard.  Francis Bernardone was very ill with a fever.  For week after week his mother nursed him; and each night hardly believed that her son would live to see the light of the next morning.  When at last the fever left him, he was so feeble that for weeks he could not rise from his bed.  Gradually, however, he got better:  as he did so the thing that he desired most of all in the world was to see the lovely country around Assisi;—­the mountains, the Umbrian Plain beneath, the blue skies, the dainty flowers.

At last one day, with aching limbs and in great feebleness, he crept out of doors.  There were the great Apennine Mountains on the side of which his city of Assisi was built.  There were the grand rocky peaks pointing to the intense blue sky.  There was the steep street with the houses built of stone of a strange, delicate pink colour, as though the light of dawn were always on them.  There were the dark green olive trees, and the lovely tendrils of the vines.  The gay Italian flowers were blooming.

Stretching away in the distance was one of the most beautiful landscapes of the world; the broad Umbrian Plain with its browns and greens melting in the distance into a bluish haze that softened the lines of the distant hills.

How he had looked forward to seeing it all, to being in the sunshine, to feeling the breeze on his hot brow!  But what—­he wondered—­had happened to him?  He looked at it all, but he felt no joy.  It all seemed dead and empty.  He turned his back on it and crawled indoors again, sad and sick at heart.  He was sure that he would never feel again “the wild joys of living.”

As Francis went back to his bed he began to think what he should do with the rest of his life.  He made up his mind not to waste it any longer:  but he did not see clearly what he should do with it.

A short time after Francis begged a young nobleman of Assisi, who was just starting to fight in a war, if he might go with him.  The nobleman—­Walter of Brienne, agreed:  so Francis bought splendid trappings for his horse, and a shield, sword and spear.  His armour and his horse’s harness were more splendid than even those of Walter.  So they went clattering together out of Assisi.

But he had not gone thirty miles before he was smitten again by fever.  After sunset one evening he lay dreamily on his bed when he seemed to hear a voice.

“Francis,” it asked, “what could benefit thee most, the master or the servant, the rich man or the poor?”

“The master and the rich man,” answered Francis in surprise.

“Why then,” went on the voice, “dost thou leave God, Who is the Master and rich, for man, who is the servant and poor?”

“Then, Lord, what will Thou that I do?” asked Francis.

“Return to thy native town, and it shall be shown thee there what thou shall do,” said the voice.