given to this Well."

Such was the tale told by the Reverend Father Adone Doni.

Night after night I returned to find the amiable Cordelier sitting on
the edge of the mystic well. I would seat myself by his side, and he
would tell over for my benefit some fragment of history known only to
himself. He had many delightful stories of the sort to relate, being
better read than any one else in the antiquities of his country. These
lived again and grew bright and young in his head, as if it contained an
intellectual Fountain of Eternal Youth. Ever fresh pictures flowed from
his white-fringed lips. As he spoke, the moonlight bathed his beard in a
silver flood. The crickets accompanied the narrator's voice with the
shrilling of their wing-cases, and ever and anon his words, uttered in
the softest of all dialects of human speech, would be answered by the
fluted plaintive croaking of the frogs, which hearkened from across the
road--a friendly, if apprehensive audience.

I left Sienna towards the middle of June; and I have never seen the
Reverend Father Adone Doni since. He clings to my memory like a figure
in a dream; and I have now put into writing the tales he told me on the
road of Monte Oliveto. They will be found in the present volume; I only
hope they may have retained, in their new dress, some vestiges of the
grace they had in the telling at the Well of St. Clare.

SAN SATIRO

TO ALPHONSE DAUDET

SAN SATIRO

_Consors paterni luminis,
Lux ipse lucis et dies,
Noctem canendo rumpimus;
Assiste postulantibus._

_Aufer tenebras mentium;
Fuga catervas daemonum;
Expelle somnolentiam,
Ne pigritantes obruat._[1]

(_Breviarium Romanum_
Third day of the week: at matins.)

[Footnote 1: "Partner of the Father's light, light of light and day of
day, we break the dusk of night with psalms; help us now, Thy
suppliants. Remove the darkness of our minds; scatter the demon hosts
away; expel the sin of drowsiness, lest we be slack in serving Thee."]

Fra Mino had raised himself by his humility above his brethren, and
still a young man, he governed the Monastery of Santa Fiora wisely and
well. He was devout, and loved long meditations and long prayers;
sometimes he had ecstasies. After the example of his spiritual father,
St. Francis, he composed songs in the vernacular tongue in celebration
of perfect love, which is the love of God. And these exercises were
without fault whether of metre or