umphant crowd defiled into the church of the nuns,
hushing, let us hope, their songs of joy, their transports of
gratulations, out of respect to the grief which dwelt there, and
could scarcely, by all the arguments of family pride, or the
excitement of this universal triumph, be brought to rejoice. The
bier was set down within the chancel, the coffin opened, and opened
also was the little window through which the nuns received the
sacrament on ordinary occasions. To this little opening the pale
group of nuns, ten of them, with Clara at their head, came marching
silently, with tears and suppressed cries. Clara herself, even in
face of that multitude, could not restrain her grief. 'Father,
father, what will become of us?' she cried out; 'who will care for
us now, or console us in our troubles?' 'Virgin modesty,' says
Celano, stopped her lamentations, and with a miserable attempt at
thanksgiving, reminding herself that the angels were rejoicing at
his coming, and all was gladness on his arrival in the city of God,
the woman who had been his closest friend in this world, whose
sympathy he had sought so often, kissed the pale hands--'splendid
hands,' says Celano, in his enthusiasm, 'adorned with precious gems
and shining pearls'--and disappeared from the little window with
her tears into the dim convent behind, where nobody could reprove
her sorrow."

The personality of Chiara comes down to us through the ages invested
with untold charm. It is said that when she was dying there came "a long
procession of white-robed virgins, led by the Queen of Heaven, whose
head was crowned with a diadem of shining gold, each of the celestial
visitors stooped to kiss Chiara as her soul passed to its home."

During all the life of Francis, whenever any new movement or work was to
be undertaken, he invariably sent to ask the counsel and the prayers of
Chiara.

The miraculous preservation of the body of Santa Chiara is one of the
articles of faith in Assisi. In 1850--six hundred years after her
death--a tomb believed to be hers was found and opened in the presence
of a distinguished group of ecclesiastics, among whom was Cardinal
Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII. In this tomb a form is said to have been
found, and it has been placed in a reliquary of alabaster and Carrara
marble especially constructed for it. This sanctuary is placed in the
ch