g
attention by his extravagant or fantastic attire. Even at night the
joyous company kept up their merrymakings, causing the town to ring
with their noisy songs.[21]

At this very time the troubadours were roaming over the towns of
Northern Italy[22] and bringing brilliant festivities and especially
Courts of Love into vogue. If they worked upon the passions, they also
made appeal to feelings of courtesy and delicacy; it was this that saved
Francis. In the midst of his excesses he was always refined and
considerate, carefully abstaining from every base or indecent
utterance.[23] Already his chief aspiration was to rise above the
commonplace. Tortured with the desire for that which is far off and
high,[24] he had conceived a sort of passion for chivalry, and fancying
that dissipation was one of the distinguishing features of nobility, he
had thrown himself into it with all his soul.

But he who, at twenty, goes from pleasure to pleasure with the heart not
absolutely closed to good, must now and then, at some turning of the
road, become aware that there are hungry folk, who could live a month on
what he spends in a few hours on frivolity. Francis saw them, and with
his impressionable nature for the moment forgot everything else. In
thought he put himself in their place, and it sometimes happened that he
gave them all the money he had about him and even his clothes.

One day he was busy with some customers in his father's shop, when a man
came in, begging for charity in the name of God. Losing his patience
Francis sharply turned him away; but quickly reproaching himself for his
harshness he thought, "What would I not have done if this man had asked
something of me in the name of a count or a baron? What ought I not to
have done when he came in the name of God? I am no better than a clown!"
Leaving his customers he ran after the beggar.[25]

Bernardone had been well pleased with his son's commercial aptitude in
the early days when the young man was first in his father's employ.
Francis was only too proficient in spending money; he at least knew well
how to make it.[26] But this satisfaction did not last long. Francis's
bad companions were exercising over him a most pernicious influence. The
time came when he could no longer endure to be separated from them; if
he heard their call, nothing could keep him, he would leave everything
and go after them.[27]

All this time political events were hurrying on in Umbria and Ital