most distinguished by their subtlety of mind and the fame of
their learning. Deriving consolation from their sympathetic
conversation, we were delightfully entertained, now by
demonstrative chains of reasoning, now by the recital of physical
processes and the treatises of the doctors of the Church, now by
stimulating discourses on the allegorical meanings of things, as
by a rich and well-varied intellectual feast. Such men we chose
as comrades in our years of learning, as companions in our
chamber, as associates on our journeys, as guests at our table,
and, in short, as helpmates in all the vicissitudes of life. But
as no happiness is permitted to endure for long, we were
sometimes deprived of the bodily companionship of some of these
shining lights, when justice looking down from heaven, the
ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they deserved fell
to their portion. And thus it happened, as was only right, that
in attending to their own cures they were obliged to absent
themselves from attendance upon us.

We will add yet another very convenient way by which a great
multitude of books old as well as new came into our hands. For
we never regarded with disdain or disgust the poverty of the
mendicant orders, adopted for the sake of Christ; but in all
parts of the world took them into the kindly arms of our
compassion, allured them by the most friendly familiarity into
devotion to ourselves, and having so allured them cherished them
with munificent liberality of beneficence for the sake of God,
becoming benefactors of all of them in general in such wise that
we seemed none the less to have adopted certain individuals with
a special fatherly affection. To these men we were as a refuge
in every case of need, and never refused to them the shelter of