cheating the world and sorning the alms
of the poor; away with you!' and whips the door to, leaving us till
nightfall, cold and famished, in the snow and rain; if with patience we
bear this injury and harshness and rejection, nowise ruined in our mind
and making no murmur of complaint, but considering within ourselves,
humbly and in charity, that the porter knows well who we are, and that
God sets him up to speak against us--O Brother Leo, write down that
therein is perfect joy."

And perfect joy, he added, if, knocking a second time, they brought the
porter out upon them, fuming, and bidding them betake themselves to the
alms-house, for knaves and thieves, and nevertheless they bore all with
patience and with gladness and love. And yet again, he continued, if a
third time they knocked and shouted to him, for pity of their hunger
and cold and the misery of the night, to let them in, and he came,
fierce with rage, crying, "Ah, bold and sturdy vagabonds, now I will
pay you," and caught them by the hood, and hurled them into the snow,
and belaboured them with a knotty cudgel; and if still, in despite of
all pain and contumely, they endured with gladness, thinking of the
pains of the blessed Lord Christ, which for love of Him they too should
be willing to bear--then might it be truly written down that therein
was perfect joy.

This was the perfect joy of the Saint most like to Christ of all the
Saints that the world has seen. And of all joys this was the most
perfect, seeing that it was by the patient way of tears and
tribulation, of bodily pain and anguish of spirit, of humiliation and
rejection, that a man might come most nearly to a likeness of Christ.

Through all his gaiety and gladness and benignity he carried in his
heart one sorrow, and that was the memory of the Passion of our Lord.
Once he was found weeping in the country, and when he was asked whether
he was in grievous pain that he wept, "Ah!" he replied, "it is for the
Passion of my Lord Jesus that I weep; and for that I should think
little shame to go weeping through the whole world."

Two years before his death there befell him that miraculous
transfiguration, which, so far as it may be with a sinful son of Adam,
made perfect the resemblance between him and the Saviour crucified.
And it was after this manner.

In the upper valley of the Arno stream there towers above the pines and
giant beeches of the hills a great basalt rock, Alvernia, which looks