ence, there is place at the famous tribunal for a simple
spectator who has come in by accident. He has made out a brief and would
like very simply to tell his neighbors his opinion.

This, then, is not a history _ad probandum_, to use the ancient formula.
Is this to say that I have only desired to give the reader a moment of
diversion? That would be to understand my thought very ill. In the grand
spectacles of history as in those of nature there is something divine;
from it our minds and hearts gain a virtue at once pacifying and
encouraging, we experience the salutary sensation of littleness, and
seeing the beauties and the sadnesses of the past we learn better how to
judge the present hour.

In one of the frescos of the Upper Church of Assisi, Giotto has
represented St. Clara and her companions coming out from St. Damian all
in tears, to kiss their spiritual father's corpse as it is being carried
to its last home. With an artist's liberty he has made the chapel a rich
church built of precious marbles.

Happily the real St. Damian is still there, nestled under some
olive-trees like a lark under the heather; it still has its ill-made
walls of irregular stones, like those which bound the neighboring
fields. Which is the more beautiful, the ideal temple of the artist's
fancy, or the poor chapel of reality? No heart will be in doubt.

Francis's official historians have done for his biography what Giotto
did for his little sanctuary. In general they have done him ill-service.
Their embellishments have hidden the real St. Francis, who was, in fact,
infinitely nobler than they have made him to be. Ecclesiastical writers
appear to make a great mistake in thus adorning the lives of their
heroes, and only mentioning their edifying features. They thus give
occasion, even to the most devout, to suspect their testimony. Besides,
by thus surrounding their saints with light they make them superhuman
creatures, having nothing in common with us; they are privileged
characters, marked with the divine seal; they are, as the litanies say,
vials of election, into which God has poured the sweetest perfumes;
their sanctity is revealed almost in spite of themselves; they are born
saints as others are born kings or slaves, their life is set out against
the golden background of a tryptich, and not against the sombre
background of reality.

By such means the saints, perhaps, gain something in the respect of the
superstitious; but their live