"Oh my Lord, I commend to Thee this day, this family which Thou hast entrusted to me. My infirmities, Thou knowest, make it impossible for me to take care of it. I put it into the hands of Ministers. If it come to pass through their negligence, their scandals, or their too great severity, one of the brethren perish, they will give account to Thee at the Day of Judgment."
No entreaty or argument could get Francis to alter this decision. He was a man in the prime of life, and, humanly speaking, he ought to have had long years of service before him. Perhaps he felt that already his days were numbered, and that it was only a question of a few years at most.
As long as he lived his successors were known as Vicar-Generals. He would only consent to preserve the title and rights of Minister General. This arrangement had no serious results as far as Peter Cantani's government went. He was a good man, and carried out Francis' idea exactly, so that Francis could leave all to him, and with a clear conscience, devote himself to visiting the centres and preaching. But, unfortunately, Peter Cantani's reign was a brief one; he died a very short time after his promotion to the Vicar Generalship.
Storm Clouds.
From the death of Peter Cantani till his own death, the storm-clouds of internal struggle gathered round Francis' path. His life was not to be all one long, if hard worked for, success. No! life is not lived thus; there is the dark as well as the bright in its mosaic, but it is sad, we say in our humanity, when the dark work is done at the end. But God, Who is the chief Workman, knows best how He wants His work ordered; He has His eyes on the beautiful end, while we fix ours tearfully at the unfinished, and, therefore, inexplicable pattern.
There was yet, however, one unalloyed joy in store for Francis before he entered upon his last dark years of service, one of the greatest social reforms the world has ever known—the establishment of the Third or Tertiary Order of Brothers Minor.
CHAPTER XVI.
"Brethren of the Militia of Jesus Christ."
"A dream of man and woman,
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold.