r you, so that you may bring forth young and multiply according to the
commandment of our Creator."

And he went and made nests for them all, and the turtle-doves began to
lay eggs and bring up their broods under the eyes of the Brothers.[20]

At Rieti a family of red-breasts were the guests of the monastery, and
the young birds made marauding expeditions on the very table where the
Brothers were eating.[21] Not far from there, at Greccio,[22] they
brought to Francis a leveret that had been taken alive in a trap. "Come
to me, brother leveret," he said to it. And as the poor creature, being
set free, ran to him for refuge, he took it up, caressed it, and finally
put it on the ground that it might run away; but it returned to him
again and again, so that he was obliged to send it to the neighboring
forest before it would consent to return to freedom.[23]

One day he was crossing the Lake of Rieti. The boatman in whose bark he
was making the passage offered him a tench of uncommon size. Francis
accepted it with joy, but to the great amazement of the fisherman put it
back into the water, bidding it bless God.[24]

We should never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this
kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a
perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is
ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a
child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes
ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into
the limpid water of a brook.[27]

This perfect lover of poverty permitted one luxury--he even commanded it
at Portiuncula--that of flowers; the Brother was bidden not to sow
vegetables and useful plants only; he must reserve one corner of good
ground for our sisters, the flowers of the fields. Francis talked with
them also, or rather he replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle
language crept into the very depth of his heart.[28]

The thirteenth century was prepared to understand the voice of the
Umbrian poet; the sermon to the birds[29] closed the reign of Byzantine
art and of the thought of which it was the image. It is the end of
dogmatism and authority; it is the coming in of individualism and
inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to be followed by obstinate
reactions, but none the less marking a date in the history of the human
conscience.[30] Many among the companions of Franci