Nearly seven hundred long years have passed since that eventful day, but
the begging Brothers of Francis still traverse those Italian highways
over which the saint now journeyed with meek and joyous spirit.
"He was not yet far distant from his rising
Before he had begun to make the earth
Some comfort from his mighty virtue feel.
For he in youth his father's wrath incurred
For certain Dame, to whom, as unto death,
The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock;
And was before his spiritual court
_Et coram patre_ unto her united;
Then day by day more fervently he loved her.
* * * * *
But that too darkly I may not proceed,
Francis and Poverty for these two lovers
Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse."
--_Dante_.
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.
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