ncis. She belonged to the noble family of the
Sciffi. At the age when a little girl's imagination awakes and stirs,
she heard the follies of the son of Bernardone recounted at length. She
was sixteen when the Saint preached for the first time in the cathedral,
suddenly appearing like an angel of peace in a city torn by intestine
dissensions. To her his appeals were like a revelation. It seemed as if
Francis was speaking for her, that he divined her secret sorrows, her
most personal anxieties, and all that was ardent and enthusiastic in the
heart of this young girl rushed like a torrent that suddenly finds an
outlet into the channel indicated by him. For saints as for heroes the
supreme stimulus is woman's admiration.

But here, more than ever, we must put away the vulgar judgment which can
understand no union between man and woman where the sexual instinct has
no part. That which makes the union of the sexes something almost divine
is that it is the prefiguration, the symbol, of the union of souls.
Physical love is an ephemeral spark, designed to kindle in human hearts
the flame of a more lasting love; it is the outer court of the temple,
but not the most holy place; its inestimable value is precisely that it
leaves us abruptly at the door of the holiest of all as if to invite us
to step over the threshold.

The mysterious sigh of nature goes out for the union of souls. This is
the unknown God to whom debauchees, those pagans of love, offer their
sacrifices, and this sacred imprint, even though effaced, though soiled
by all pollutions, often saves the man of the world from inspiring as
much disgust as the drunkard and the criminal.

But sometimes--more often than we think--there are souls so pure, so
little earthly, that on their first meeting they enter the most holy
place, and once there the thought of any other union would be not merely
a descent, but an impossibility. Such was the love of St. Francis and
St. Clara.

But these are exceptions. There is something mysterious in this supreme
purity; it is so high that in holding it up to men one risks speaking to
them in an unknown tongue, or even worse.

The biographers of St. Francis have clearly felt the danger of offering
to the multitude the sight of certain beauties which are far beyond
them, and this is for us the great fault of their works. They try to
give us not so much the true portrait of Francis as that of the perfect
minister-general of the Order such