Thou wilt pardon me, and I will serve Thee with all my strength. Thou wilt pardon me, and I will give Thee complete satisfaction for my sins." At other times, disheartened at sight of his enormities, he did not dare to raise his eyes to heaven, which he had so often lost. He was one day meditating on the mercy of God, when a man, dressed like a pilgrim, came up with him. At first, pretending friendship, he offered to keep him company; then, on the pretext of their having taken the wrong road, he tried to put him astray in order to interfere with the pilgrimage. They soon entered into conversation, and the stranger made Francis tell him all his adventures and wild pranks. When he had finished. the supposed pilgrim took his hand, and exclaimed : "Oh, miserable blind man! Do you imagine that crimes so foul and abominable could be blotted out by this pilgrimage ? If for one only sin God cast out the angels from heaven, and man from paradise, do you think He will pardon you so many and so great excesses? Confidence in God is all very well; but too much of it is presumption, and a kind of madness; and surely the penance of a few days cannot cure the excesses of years. Return, return, unfortunate wretch, to your own country, and pursue your former course of life, for do what you may, you cannot escape eternal damnation." When Francis heard these words he threw himself on his face to the earth, and humbly adored the Lord, and then rising, inflamed with a holy fire, he addressed these words to his mock companion: "I confess that my sins are very great and more numerous than the stars of heaven; but the mercy of God is greater still, and will delight in pardoning my crimes. Why, then, should I despair of pardon, when Jesus paid or my faults with His life? If you are an angel or a man, pray God to forgive me; if you are the enemy of my God, return to your prison in the abyss." At these words the tempter disappeared, and the pilgrim happily

pursued his journey, continually occupied with the divine praises. When he at last reached Compostella, he visited the Apostle's shrine, and received the holy Sacraments in his church with edifying modesty and recollection. God rewarded his devotion by perfectly restoring his sight. This public miracle powerfully excited confidence in the protection of St. James in those who had known him almost blind, and produced in our saint unlimited gratitude to his protector. Not knowing how to correspond to so great a favour, he spent long hours in meditation, and redoubled his penances and fasts, everything he did in praise of the divine mercies appearing to him as nothing.

When his devotion was satisfied, he undertook another pilgrimage no less painful in those times. Begging from door to door, and suffering a thousand insults and injuries, he went to Rome, where he received the benediction of Gregory IX., and a plenary indulgence. He remained in the Holy City during Lent, fasting rigorously on bread and water. Then he visited other sanctuaries in Naples, Sicily, Piedmont, &c., giving in all places a bright example of modesty, piety, and mortification, and unequivocal proofs of a sincere repentance. Where he experienced most fervour was in the sanctuary of the holy house of Loretto, in which, during a long ecstasy, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him with the Child Jesus, consoling and encouraging him to persevere in the path he had entered on. When these pilgrimages were over he returned to his native place, resolved to give complete satisfaction for the scandals of his youth:

Clothed in sackcloth, bare-footed, his head uncovered and exposed to the rays of the sun, he preached by his example penance and the contempt of all things earthly. The nights he spent in prayer, and at break of day he would go to the house of the Lord to offer his respects to the God of armies, and attend at the holy Sacrifice of

the Mass. Supported by so many graces from heaven in reward for his faithful correspondence, he loved all he had abhorred, and abhorred all he had formerly loved. Labour now became sweet to him, and he spent the greater part of the day at it. The bad smell of the undressed hides afforded him matter for serious reflection on the foulness of souls undressed by mortification; on the necessity of keeping the heart completely cleansed from the things of earth, and particularly on the importance of self-restraint. And no matter what his hand might be engaged at, he always endeavoured to accompany his labour with holy conversation, or pious considerations, or edifying hymns. Cursing horrified him, backbiting vexed him; and when he could not prevent these defects among his companions, he tried to refrain them by prayers and penances. At sunset, having finished his ordinary work, he visited the Blessed Sacrament, and then in the shades of night he would go through the streets of Sienna, crying out in a loud voice expressions like these: "Be converted to God, erring souls, be converted to God, for the Divine Mercy does not always wait." And that his words might be the more efficacious, he scourged himself severely in the places most thronged. Sometimes zeal for the divine glory filled him with invincible enthusiasm, and penetrating into taverns and gambling-houses, he would upset the tables, tear the cards, throw the dice out of the window; and wonderful to relate on such occasions, not one of the frequenters of these places ever dared to raise his hand to our saintly tanner.

IV.

On festival and other leisure days he visited the prisons and hospitals, everywhere giving edification, and infusing consolation into afflicted hearts. The Lord

liberally repaid his heroic virtues. Among the extraordinary graces which it is related he received from heaven was the following vision:-One day, in the principal church of Sienna, after his usual exercises of piety, he appeared to fall asleep. In this sweet sleep he thought he saw the Virgin surrounded by armies of angels, and encircled with great splendour, who, turning to him, said: "Francis, if you wish to know the life you have to lead to attain perfection, you should abandon the world: look out, then, for some solitude, and fly from the intercourse of men." The servant of God awoke, and impelled by divine grace, went to a desert place, where he built a little hut. He lived in this solitude without other sustenance than that afforded by the herbs that grew around his dwelling, and spent the greater part of the time in prayer and penance. He was attacked by many and strong temptations: but by his diligence in obeying divine grace, he came out from all victorious.

About this time a rich gentleman of Sienna died, and amongst other bequests left five florins to every hermit in the neighbourhood. The executors, according to the directions of the will, went to Francis's hut and asked him to take the money to pray for the deceased gentleman; but the hermit refused, saying: "God forbid, that having once renounced the world, its vanities, and riches, I should again involve myself in them. Take away the money, and I shall pray for the deceased all

the same." But the executors, resolved on carring out the testator's will to the letter, left the money in the hole which gave light to the hut. There it might have been covered with cobwebs if Providence had not disposed otherwise. A poor widow went to ask alms from the servant of God to provide for a daughter, who, on account of her poverty and beauty, was exposed to imminent danger. When Francis heard her voice outside, he told her to take those gold pieces, and to recommend to God the soul of him who had left them. The hermit continued to live in his sweet solitude, but charity or obedience withdrew him somewhat from it.

The Council of Groti was celebrating a solemn feast, to which all the hermits of the district were invited. The humble Francis, enamoured of his hut, made his excuses; but in the end he had to yield to the divine will. As may be presumed, the banquet prepared for people accustomed to live on herbs was suitable for such guests. But our penitent, refusing even this slight indulgence, would not break on his usual abstinence. In the midst of the feast this gave occasion to one of the guests, out of harmony with his profession, to offer him an insult. He called him a hypocrite, a deceiver, and a humbug; he said that now in his old age, when unable to serve the world, he must put on the cloak of virtue, and give himself out as a saint. Francis listened to these injuries with profound humility, and with an angelic smile, answered him thus: "Brother, I am far worse than you said, and much worse things you might say of me, but I am sorry you should scandalise the bystanders to the detriment of your own soul." "Yes," answered the other, we know your licentious life, and what we have to fear from a man like you." The bystanders, astonished at the saint's humility, far from following the calumniator's example, conceived a high idea of his solid perfection. The acts of his life

66