"Well, I am a poor man, and my wife was sick," he said afterward, in
telling the story, with a sad smile in his eyes, which are as blue and
almost as blind as violets.

These stories awaken a laugh only at the time, but gain a certain
sublimity when years have gilded them--like that one of St.
Bonaventura, which this reminds us of: When the two legates sent by the
pope of that time to carry the scarlet beretta of a cardinal to St.
Bonaventura set out in search of him, they were obliged to follow him
to a little Franciscan convent at a short distance from Florence, where
he had retired for devotion and to practise for a while the humble
rules of his order. As these two dignified prelates came solemnly
around an angle of the building they glanced through the open
kitchen-window, and were astonished to see the personage they sought
engaged in washing the supper-dishes. He accosted them with perfect
calmness, and, learning their errand, requested them to hang the hat in
a tree near by till he should have finished washing the dishes. They
complied, and the pots and pans and plates having been attended to, the
whole community adjourned to the chapel and the saint received the
dignity of prince of the Church.

The eight days' festa of Corpus Domini opened in Asisi with one of the
most exquisite sights I have ever seen, the procession of the cathedral
as it passed from San Francesco through Via Superba on its return to
the cathedral. We took our places in a window reserved for us, and
waited. There all was quiet and deserted. The air was perfumed by
sprigs of green which each one had strewn before his own house. One
living creature alone was visible--a little boy who knelt in the middle
of the street and carefully placed small yellow flowers in the form of