ncis on his part prayed God to convert the robbers. They
returned with the brother, and when St. Francis gave them the
assurance of the pardon of God, they changed their lives and
entered the Order, in which they lived and died most
holily.[22]

What has sometimes been said of the voice of the blood is still more
true of the voice of the soul. When a man truly wakens another to moral
life, he gains for himself an unspeakable gratitude. The word _master_
is often profaned, but it can express the noblest and purest of earthly
ties.

Who are those among us, who in the hours of manly innocence when they
examine their own consciences, do not see rising up before them from out
of the past the ever beloved and loving face of one who, perhaps without
knowing it, initiated them into spiritual things? At such a time we
would throw ourselves at the feet of this father, would tell him in
burning words of our admiration and gratitude. We cannot do it, for the
soul has its own bashfulness; but who knows that our disquietude and
embarrassment do not betray us, and unveil, better than words could do,
the depths of our heart? The air they breathed at Portiuncula was all
impregnated with joy and gratitude like this.

To many of the Brothers, St. Francis was truly a saviour; he had
delivered them from chains heavier than those of prisons. And therefore
their greatest desire was in their turn to call others to this same
liberty.

We have already seen Brother Bernardo on a mission to Florence a few
months after his entrance into the Order. Arrived at maturity when he
put on the habit, he appears in some degree the senior of this apostolic
college. He knew how to obey St. Francis and remain faithful to the very
end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege
of the young--of Brother Leo, for example--of being able to transform
himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His
physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy,
which is so great a charm of the others.

Toward this epoch two Brothers entered the Order, men such as the
successors of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright
light on the simplicity of the early days. It will be remembered with
what zeal Francis had repaired several churches; his solicitude went
further; he saw a sort of profanation in the negligence with which most
of them were kept; the want of cleanliness of the