over Italy, east and west, to the two seas. That rock is accessible by
but a single foot-track, and it is gashed and riven by grim chasms, yet
withal great oaks and beech-trees flourish atop among the boulders, and
there are drifts of fragrant wild flowers, and legions of birds and
other wild creatures dwell there; and the lights and colours of heaven
play about the rock, and the winds of heaven visit it with wholesome
air.

Now a great and wealthy gentleman of Tuscany, Orlando of Chiusi, gave
St. Francis that mountain for a hermitage where he could be remote from
men, and thither, with three of the brethren most dear to him, the
Saint went to spend the forty days of the Fast of St. Michael the
Archangel.

Two nights they slept on the way, but on the third day, so worn was St.
Francis with fatigue and illness, that his companions were fain to beg
a poor peasant to lend them his ass. As they proceeded on their
journey the peasant, walking behind the ass, said to St. Francis, "Tell
me now, art thou Brother Francis of Assisi?" and when St. Francis said
he was, the peasant rejoined, "Look to it, then, that thou strive to be
as good as folk take thee to be, so that those who have faith in thee
be not disappointed in what they expect to find in thee." And
instantly St. Francis got down from the ass, and, kneeling on the
ground, kissed the peasant's feet, and thanked him for his brotherly
admonition.

So onward they journeyed up the mountain till they came to the foot of
Alvernia, and there as St. Francis rested him under an oak, vast
flights of birds came fluttering and blithely singing, and alighted on
his shoulders and arms, and on his lap, and about his feet. "Not
ill-pleased is our Lord, I think," said he, "that we have come to dwell
on this mountain, seeing what glee our little brothers and sisters the
Birds show at our coming."

Under a fair beech on the top of the rock the brethren built him a cell
of branches, and he lived alone in prayer, apart from the others, for
the foreknowledge of his death had overshadowed him. Once as he stood
by the cell, scanning the shape of the mountain and musing on the
clefts and chasms in the huge rocks, it was borne in upon him that the
mountain had been thus torn and cloven in the Ninth Hour when our Lord
cried with a loud voice, and the rocks were rent. And beside this
beech-tree St. Francis was many times uplifted into the air in rapture,
and many times Angels came to h