"What think you of poverty? "—and the holy man replied:
"I think it is a pearl of price."
But Satan retorted:
"You pretend poverty is a great good; yet all the while you are robbing the poor of a part of this great good, by giving them alms."
Fra Giovanni pondered over this, and said:
"The alms I give, I give to Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose poverty cannot be minished, for it is infinite. It gushes from Him as from an inexhaustible fountain; and its waters flow freely for His favourite sons. And these shall be poor always, according to the promise of the Son of God. In giving to the poor, I am giving not to men, but to God, as the citizens pay tax to the Podestà, and the rate is for the City, which of the money it so receives supplies the town's needs. Now what I give is for paving the City of God. It is a vain thing to be poor in deed, if we be not poor in spirit. The gown of frieze, the cord, the sandals, the wallet and the wooden bowl are only signs and symbols. The Poverty I love is spiritual, and I address her as Lady, because she is an idea, and all beauty resides in this same idea."
Satan smiled, and replied:
"Your maxims, Fra Giovanni, are the maxims of a wise man of Greece, Diogenes by name, who taught at their Universities in the times when Alexander of Macedon was waging his wars."
And Satan said again:
"Is it true you despise the goods of this world?"