my mother and by Fra Gervasio at my mother's bidding.

And as the years passed under such influences as had been at work upon me
from the cradle, influences which had known no check save that brief one
afforded by Gino Falcone, I became perforce devout and pious from very
inclination.

Joyous transports were afforded me by the study of the life of that Saint
Luigi of the noble Mantuan House of Gonzaga--in whom I saw an ideal to be
emulated, since he seemed to me to be much in my own case and of my own
estate--who had counted the illusory greatness of this world well lost so
that he might win the bliss of Paradise. Similarly did I take delight in
the Life, written by Tommaso da Celano, of that blessed son of Pietro
Bernardone, the merchant of Assisi, that Francis who became the Troubadour
of the Lord and sang so sweetly the praises of His Creation. My heart
would swell within me and I would weep hot and very bitter tears over the
narrative of the early and sinful part of his life, as we may weep to see a
beloved brother beset by deadly perils. And greater, hence, was the joy,
the exultation, and finally the sweet peace and comfort that I gathered
from the tale of his conversion, of his wondrous works, and of the Three
Companions.

In these pages--so lively was my young imagination and so wrought upon by
what I read--I suffered with him again his agonies of hope, I thrilled with
some of the joy of his stupendous ecstasies, and I almost envied him the
signal mark of Heavenly grace that had imprinted the stigmata upon his
living body.

All that concerned him, too, I read: his Little Flowers, his Testament, The
Mirror of Perfection; but my greatest delight was derived from his Song of