sily, choked by a vegetation as luxuriant as that of a
virgin forest. On all sides uprise walls of perpendicular rocks, and on
their crests, several hundred yards above your head, are feudal
fortresses, among others the Castle of Miranda, more giddy, more
fantastic than any which Gustave Dore's fancy ever dreamed.

After four hours of walking, the defile opens out and you find yourself
without transition in a broad valley, sparkling with light.

Rieti, the only city in this plain of several leagues, appears far away
at the other extremity, commanded by hills of a thoroughly tropical
aspect, behind which rise the mighty Apennines, almost always covered
with snow.

The highway goes directly toward this town, passing between tiny lakes;
here and there roads lead off to little villages which you see, on the
hillside, between the cultivated fields and the edge of the forests;
there are Stroncone, Greccio, Cantalice, Poggio-Buscone, and ten other
small towns, which have given more saints to the Church than a whole
province of France.

Between the inhabitants of the district and their neighbors of Umbria,
properly so called, the difference is extreme. They are all of the
striking type of the Sabine peasants, and they remain to this day entire
strangers to new customs. One is born a Capuchin there as elsewhere one
is born a soldier, and the traveller needs to have his wits about him
not to address every man he meets as Reverend Father.

Francis had often gone over this district in every direction. Like its
neighbor, the hilly March of Ancona, it was peculiarly prepared to
receive the new gospel. In these hermitages, with their almost
impossible simplicity, perched near the villages on every side, without
the least care for material comfort, but always where there is the
widest possible view, was perpetuated a race of Brothers Minor,
impassioned, proud, stubborn, almost wild, who did not wholly understand
their master, who did not catch his exquisite simplicity, his
impossibility of hating, his dreams of social and political renovation,
his poetry and delicacy, but who did understand the lover of nature and
of poverty.[1] They did more than understand him; they lived his
life, and from that Christmas festival observed in the woods of Greccio
down to to-day they have remained the simple and popular representatives
of the Strict Observance. From them comes to us the Legend of the Three
Companions, the most life-like and true