“Well, we will see. Again Francis once gave way to pride. How do you think he conquered it?”
“Tell me, for that is my great sin.”
“He exchanged his gay clothes with a wretched beggar, and begged all day on the steps of Saint Peter’s at Rome.”
“May I do that on the steps of Oseney?”
“It would not be a bad way to subdue the pride of the flesh! But then there are other things to subdue. Dost thou love to eat the fat and drink the sweet?”
“All too well!”
“So did Francis. He had a very sweet tooth, so he lived for a week on such scraps as he could beg in beggar’s plight from door to door; all this in the first flush of his devotion.”
“And what else?”
“Ah! that without which all else is nought, the root from which it all sprang: he lived as one who felt the words, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ which liveth in me.’ He would spend hours in rapt devotion before the crucifix, with no mortal near, until his very face was transformed, and the love of the Crucified set his heart on fire.”
“And when did he go forth to found his mighty Order?”