you attempt to show by your eyes what is not in your heart? You have,
without due consideration, formed a plan which you will soon as lightly
give up." In fact, a few days after he went home with two of his
relations who had come in search of him, and he thought no more of
becoming a religious.

The servant of God, having regained some portion of strength during
his residence with the bishop, by relaxing in the severity of his
abstinences, which were extreme, became irritated with his own body,
and was inflamed with the desire of humbling himself: "It is not right,"
he said, "that people should think me austere, while I am pampered in
secret." Upon which the spirit of humility suggested to him an act,
which St. Bonaventure records, not as an example, but as a prodigy,
to be compared only with those extraordinary things which God commanded
the Prophets to perform. He rose, and accompanied by a great number
of his brethren, he went to the great Square of Assisi, assembled the
people, and led them to the cathedral. Then he caused himself to be
dragged by the vicar of his convent from the church to the place of
execution, stripped, and with a cord round his neck, as the Prophet
Isaias. There, weak as he still was, and shivering with cold, he
addressed the assembly with surprising energy, and said in a loud
voice: "I assure that I ought not to receive honor as if I were a
spiritual man. I am a carnal, sensual, and greedy man, whom you ought
thoroughly to despise." The hearers, who knew the austerity of his
life, struck with such a scene, admitted that this extraordinary
humility was more to be admired than imitated.

Nevertheless, the holy doctor, whom we have just named, finds in this
some wholesome instruction. It teaches us, he says, that, in the
practice of virtue, we must avoid with great care everything having