ass
A sound of German music on the air."

When summer came, Folgore says the _corti_ had other things:--

"For July, in Siena by the willow-tree
I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine,
In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat, in company,
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
Boiled capons, sovereign kids;--and let their treat
Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree."

Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language was
its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he became
the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the Lady
Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the decay of the
Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes, merchants, even
many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned the poor. The
voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God, and he sent their
terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.

In Sicily, Frederick II.--the Julian of the time--lived among
fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,--a type
of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness which
Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury Francis put
the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poetes Franciscains,' Frederick
Ozanam says:--

"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all
perfection,--the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify
Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time: he imagined her as the
daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his
thoughts, his affianced, and his bride."

The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout.
Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with the
Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of his
comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne, who
was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies. About this
time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a shivering
soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed that the
voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly fame," he
said.--"But which of two is better for you,--the Master, or the
servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant, the Lord
for the slave?"--"O Lord, what shall I do?" asked Francis.--"Return
unto the city," said the voice, "and there it