“May I visit the lepers tomorrow?”

“The disease is infectious.”

“What of that?” said Martin, unconsciously imitating his friend Hubert.

“Well, we will see.  Again Francis once gave way to pride.  How do you think he conquered it?”

“Tell me, for that is my great sin.”

“He exchanged his gay clothes with a wretched beggar, and begged all day on the steps of Saint Peter’s at Rome.”

“May I do that on the steps of Oseney?”

“It would not be a bad way to subdue the pride of the flesh!  But then there are other things to subdue.  Dost thou love to eat the fat and drink the sweet?”

“All too well!”

“So did Francis.  He had a very sweet tooth, so he lived for a week on such scraps as he could beg in beggar’s plight from door to door; all this in the first flush of his devotion.”

“And what else?”

“Ah! that without which all else is nought, the root from which it all sprang:  he lived as one who felt the words, ’I live, yet not I, but Christ which liveth in me.’  He would spend hours in rapt devotion before the crucifix, with no mortal near, until his very face was transformed, and the love of the Crucified set his heart on fire.”

“And when did he go forth to found his mighty Order?”

“Not until the eighth year of this century, and the twenty-sixth of his age.  One feast of bright Saint Barnaby, he was at mass, and heard the words of the Gospel wherein is described how our Lord sent forth His apostles to preach two by two; without purse, without change of raiment, without staff or shoes {19}.  Out he went, threw off his ordinary clothing, donned a gray robe, like this we wear, tied a rope round for a girdle, and went forth crying: 

“‘Repent of your sins, and believe the Gospel!’

“I was travelling in Italy then, and once met him on his road.  Methinks I see him now—­his oval face, his full forehead, his clear, bright, limpid eyes, his flowing hair, his long hands and thin delicate fingers, and his commanding presence.

“‘Brother!’ he said.  ’Hast thou met with Him of Nazareth?  He is seeking for thee.’

“You will hardly believe that I did not understand him at first, so unfamiliar in my giddy youth were the simplest facts of the Gospel.  But the words sank as if by miraculous force into my heart, and from that hour I knew no rest till I found Him, or He found me.”

“Was Francis long alone?”

“No.  Brother after brother joined him.  First Bernard, then Peter, then Giles; they went singing sweet carols along the road, which Francis had composed out of his ready mind.  They were the first hymns in the vernacular, and the people stopped to hear about God’s dear Son.  Then, collecting a crowd, they preached in the marketplace.  Such preaching!  Francis’ first sermon in his native town set every one crying.  They said the Passion of Jesus had never been so wept over in the memory of man.