which he met with accidentally; thus manifesting what he wished to he,
a half-naked poor one, and a crucified man. This occurred in the year
1206, when he was in his twenty-fifth year. St. Bonaventure, who gives
the name of spiritual intoxication to the admirable fervor with which
he stripped himself in order to be able to follow Jesus Christ nailed
on the cross, says that, moreover, in order to avoid the shipwrecks
of the world, he fortified himself with the representation of the wood
which was the instrument of our salvation.

Emancipated from the ties of worldly desires, as he had wished to be,
he now sought for some sequestered spot, where alone and in silence
he might listen to the voice of God. In a wood, through which he was
passing, singing the praises of God in the French language, some thieves
surrounded him and asked him who he was. "I am the herald of the great
King," he replied, in a prophetical sense, with perfect confidence in
God. On receiving this answer, they beat him cruelly, threw him into
a hole that was full of snow, and ridiculed the title he gave himself.
When they had left him, he again began to sing the praises of God in
a louder voice than before, delighted to have had an opportunity of
suffering. At a neighboring monastery, where he implored alms, which
he received as a contemptible beggar, they employed him for some days
in the vilest affairs of the scullery. But seeing that this interfered
too much with his spiritual exercises, he came to Gubbio, where one
of his friends, having recognized him, gave him, in order that he might
be more decently clad, a hermit's dress, a short tunic, a leathern
girdle, shoes, and a staff.

In this penitential habit, he subjected his body to additional
austerities; and in order to fulfil all the functions of humility, to
which he was much attached, he devoted himself to the service of the