Ugolini no doubt only encouraged him in this view, and Dominic, beset
with new anxieties, set out a few months later for Spain. The intensity
of the crisis through which he passed has not been sufficiently
noticed; the religious writers recount at length his sojourn in the
grotto of Segovia, but they see only the ascetic practices, the prayers,
the genuflexions, and do not think of looking for the cause of all this.
From this epoch it might be said that he was unceasingly occupied in
copying Francis, if the word had not a somewhat displeasing sense.
Arrived at Segovia he follows the example of the Brothers Minor, founds
a hermitage in the outskirts of the city, hidden among the rocks which
overlook the town, and thence he descends from time to time to preach to
the people. The transformation in his mode of life was so evident that
several of his companions rebelled and refused to follow him in the new
way.

Popular sentiment has at times its intuitions; a legend grew up around
this grotto of Segovia, and it was said that St. Dominic there received
the stigmata. Is there not here an unconscious effort to translate into
an image within the comprehension of all, that which actually took place
in this cave of the Sierra da Guaderrama?[8]

Thus St. Dominic also arrived at the poverty of the gospel, but the road
by which he reached it was different indeed from that which St. Francis
had followed; while the latter had soared to it as on wings, had seen in
it the final emancipation from all the anxieties which debase this life,
St. Dominic considered it only as a means; it was for him one more
weapon in the arsenal of the host charged with the defence of the
Church. We must not see in this a mere vulgar calculation; his
admiration for him whom he thus imitated and followed afar off was
sincere and profound, but genius is not to be copied. This sacred malady