Full of these thoughts they had set out, without provisions, to cross the Campagna of Rome, whose few inhabitants never venture out in the heat of the day. The road stretches away northward, keeping at some distance from the Tiber; on the left the jagged crest of Soracte, bathed in mists formed by the exhalations of the earth, looms up disproportionately as it fades in the distance; on the right, the everlasting undulations of the hillocks with their wide pastures separated by thickets so parched and ragged that they seemed to cry for mercy and pardon. Between them the dusty road which goes straight forward, implacable, showing, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but the quivering of the fiery air. Not a house, not a tree, not a passing breeze, nothing to sustain the traveller under the disquietude which creeps over him. Here and there are a few abandoned huts, their ruins looking like the corpses of departed civilizations, and on the edge of the horizon the hills rising up like gigantic and unsurmountable walls.
There are no words to describe the physical and moral sufferings to which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your skin, and parches your mouth even more than thirst. Little by little all energy ebbs away, a dumb dejection seizes you, sight and thought become alike confused, fever ensues, and you cast yourself down by the roadside, unable to take another step.
In their haste to leave Rome Francis and his companions had forgotten all this, and had imprudently set forth. They would have succumbed if a chance traveller had not brought them succor. He was obliged to leave them before they had shaken off the last hallucinations of fever, leaving them amazed with the unexpected succor which Providence had sent them.[1]
They were so severely shattered that on arriving at Orte they were obliged to stop awhile. In a desert spot not far from this city they found a shelter admirably adapted to serve them for refuge;[2] it was one of those Etruscan tombs so common in that country, whose chambers serve to this day as a shelter for beggars and gypsies. While some of the brethren hastened to the city to beg for food, the others remained in this solitude enjoying the happiness of being together, forming a thousand plans, and more than ever delighting in the charm of freedom from care and renunciation of material goods.
This place had so strong an attraction for them that it required an effort of will to quit it at the end of a fortnight. The seduction of a life purely contemplative assailed Francis, and he asked himself if instead of preaching to the multitudes he would not do better to live in retreat, solely mindful of the inward dialogue between the soul and God.[3]
This aspiration for the selfish repose of the cloister came back to him several times in his life; but love always won the victory. He was too much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in paradise—peace. Beati mortui quia quiescunt! His distinguishing peculiarity is that he never gave way to it.
The reflections of Francis and his companions during their stay at Orte only made their apostolic mission more clear and imperative to them. He, above all, seemed to be filled with a new ardor, and like a valiant knight he burned to throw himself into the thick of the fray.
Their way now led through the valley of the Nera. The contrast between these cool glens, awake with a thousand voices, and the desolation of the Roman Campagna, must have struck them vividly; the stream is only a swollen torrent, but it runs so noisily over pebbles and rocks that it seems to be conversing with them and with the trees of the neighboring forest. In proportion as they had felt themselves alone on the road from Rome to Otricoli, they now felt themselves compassed about with the life, the fecundity, the gayety of the country.
The account of Thomas of Celano becomes so animated as it describes the life of Francis at this epoch that one cannot help thinking that at this time he must have seen him, and that this first meeting remained always in his memory as the radiant dawn of his spiritual life.[4]
The Brothers had taken to preaching in such places as they came upon along their route. Their words were always pretty much the same, they showed the blessedness of peace and exhorted to penitence. Emboldened by the welcome they had received at Rome, which in all innocence they might have taken to be more favorable than it really was, they told the story to everyone they met, and thus set all scruples at rest.