e come to
see clearly into this tangled web, for every work of man bears the trace
of the hand that made it: this trace may perhaps be of an almost
imperceptible delicacy; it exists none the less, ready to reveal itself
to practised eyes. What is more impersonal than the photograph of a
landscape or of a painting, and yet among several hundreds of proofs the
amateur will go straight to the work of the operator he prefers.

These reflections were suggested by the careful study of a curious book
printed many times since the sixteenth century, the _Speculum Vitae S.
Francisci et sociorum ejus_.[45] A complete study of this work, its
sources, its printed editions, the numerous differences in the
manuscripts, would by itself require a volume and an epitome of the
history of the Order. I can give here only a few notes, taking for base
the oldest edition, that of 1504.

The confusion which reigns here is frightful. Incidents in the life of
Francis and his companions are brought together with no plan; several of
them are repeated after the interval of a few pages in a quite different
manner;[46] certain chapters are so awkwardly introduced that the
compiler has forgotten to remove the number that they bore in the work
from which he borrowed them;[47] finally, to our great surprise, we
find several _Incipit_.[48]

However, with a little perseverance we soon perceive a few openings in
the labyrinth. In the first place, here are several chapters of the
legend of Bonaventura which seem to have been put in the van as if to
protect the rest of the book. If we abstract them and the whole series
of chapters from the Fioretti, we shall have diminished the work by
nearly three-quarters.

If we take away two more chapters taken from St. Bernard of Clairvaux
and those containing Franciscan prayers, or various attestations
concerning the indulgence of Portiuncula, we finally arrive at a sort of
residue, if the expression may be forgiven, of a remarkable homogeneity.

Here the style is very different from that in the surrounding pages,
closely recalling that of the Three Companions; a single thought
inspires these pages, that the corner-stone of the Order is the love of
poverty.

Why should we not have here some fragments of the original legend of the
Three Companions? We find here nothing which does not fit in with what
we know, nothing which suggests the embellishments of a late tradition.

To confirm this hypothesis come different