Doubtless he was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the simplicity of the primitive Church.

But such a revival of innocence and sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land.

The enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were needed to effect it.

And yet how was it possible that a St.Francis, glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope?
Is it because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism, whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North, from the nations whose sunlight is so limited?
Yes, doubtless all that has much to do with the change, and the success of St.Francis was in particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad, during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.
* St.Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of mendicant friars .-- Trans.
While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.
Peter's, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before.

The linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid.