straying abroad all the while like a drunken man, and that you are
driving the plough without any heed to draw the furrows straight."

Fra Giovanni humbled himself, saying:

"It is most true I am a fool, and do nothing but what is wrong."

Then Satan asked him:

"What think you of poverty? "--and the holy man replied:

"I think it is a pearl of price."

But Satan retorted:

"You pretend poverty is a great good; yet all the while you are robbing
the poor of a part of this great good, by giving them alms."

Fra Giovanni pondered over this, and said:

"The alms I give, I give to Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose poverty cannot
be minished, for it is infinite. It gushes from Him as from an
inexhaustible fountain; and its waters flow freely for His favourite
sons. And these shall be poor always, according to the promise of the
Son of God. In giving to the poor, I am giving not to men, but to God,
as the citizens pay tax to the Podestà, and the rate is for the City,
which of the money it so receives supplies the town's needs. Now what I
give is for paving the City of God. It is a vain thing to be poor in
deed, if we be not poor in spirit. The gown of frieze, the cord, the
sandals, the wallet and the wooden bowl are only signs and symbols. The