faculty, supreme common sense. Accordingly, he ranges himself at once
among the disciples of the Apostle of Works, and spends most of his
time in the same apostleship.

Now the gospel of Works, according to St. Francis, lay in three things.
You must work without money, and be poor. You must work without
pleasure, and be chaste. You must work according to orders, and be
obedient.

Those are St. Francis's three articles of Italian opera. By which grew
the many pretty things you have come to see here.

And now if you will take your opera-glass and look up to the roof above
Arnolfo's building, you will see it is a pretty Gothic cross vault, in
four quarters, each with a circular medallion, painted by Giotto. That
over the altar has the picture of St. Francis himself. The three
others, of his Commanding Angels. In front of him, over the entrance
arch, Poverty. On his right hand, Obedience. On his left, Chastity.

Poverty, in a red patched dress, with grey wings, and a square nimbus
of glory above her head, is flying from a black hound, whose head is
seen at the corner of the medallion.

Chastity, veiled, is imprisoned in a tower, while angels watch her.

Obedience bears a yoke on her shoulders, and lays her hand on a book.

Now, this same quatrefoil, of St. Francis and his three Commanding
Angels, was also painted, but much more elaborately, by Giotto, on the
cross vault of the lower church of Assisi, and it is a question of