Every few paces an interval occurs between the houses looking toward the
plain, and you find a delightful terrace, shaded by a few trees, the
very place for enjoying the sunset without losing one of its splendors.
Hither no doubt came often the son of Bernardone, leading one of those
_farandoles_ which you may see there to this day: from his very babyhood
he was a prince among the children.

Thomas of Celano draws an appalling picture of the education of that
day. He describes parents inciting their children to vice, and driving
them by main force to wrong-doing. Francis responded only too quickly to
these unhappy lessons.[15]

His father's profession and the possibly noble origin of his mother
raised him almost to the level of the titled families of the country;
money, which he spent with both hands, made him welcome among them. Well
pleased to enjoy themselves at his expense, the young nobles paid him a
sort of court. As to Bernardone, he was too happy to see his son
associating with them to be niggardly as to the means. He was miserly,
as the course of this history will show, but his pride and self-conceit
exceeded his avarice.

Pica, his wife, gentle and modest creature,[16] concerning whom the
biographers have been only too laconic, saw all this, and mourned over
it in silence, but though weak as mothers are, she would not despair of
her son, and when the neighbors told her of Francis's escapades, she
would calmly reply, "What are you thinking about? I am very sure that,
if it pleases God, he will become a good Christian."[17] The words were
natural enough from a mother's lips, but later on they were held to have
been truly prophetic.