She sought him out and opened to him her heart. With that exaltation, a union of candor and delicacy, which is woman's fine endowment, and to which she would more readily give free course if she did not too often divine the pitfalls of base passion and incredulity, Clara offered herself to Francis.

It is one of the privileges of saints to suffer more than other men, for they feel in their more loving hearts the echo of all the sorrows of the world; but they also know joys and delights of which common men never taste. What an inexpressible song of joy must have burst forth in Francis's heart when he saw Clara on her knees before him, awaiting, with his blessing, the word which would consecrate her life to the gospel ideal.

Who knows if this interview did not inspire another saint, Fra Angelico, to introduce into his masterpiece those two elect souls who, already radiant with the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, stop to exchange a kiss before crossing its threshold?

Souls, like flowers, have a perfume of their own which never deceives. One look had sufficed for Francis to go down into the depths of this heart; he was too kind to submit Clara to useless tests, too much an idealist to prudently confine himself to custom or arbitrary decorum; as when he founded the Order of Friars, he took counsel only of himself and God. In this was his strength; if he had hesitated, or even if he had simply submitted himself to ecclesiastical rules, he would have been stopped twenty times before he had done anything. Success is so powerful an argument that the biographers appear not to have perceived how determined Francis was to ignore the canonical laws. He, a simple deacon, arrogated to himself the right to receive Clara's vows and admit her to the Order without the briefest novitiate. Such an act ought to have drawn down upon its author all the censures of the Church, but Francis was already one of those powers to whom much is forgiven, even by those who speak in the name of the holy Roman Church.

Francis had decided that on the night between Palm Sunday and Holy Monday (March 18-19, 1212) Clara should secretly quit the paternal castle and come with two companions to Portiuncula, where he would await her, and would give her the veil. She arrived just as the friars were singing matins. They went out, the story goes, carrying candles in their hands, to meet the bride, while from the woods around Portiuncula resounded songs of joy over this new bridal. Then Mass was begun at that same altar where, three years before, Francis had heard the decisive call of Jesus; he was kneeling in the same place, but surrounded now with a whole spiritual family.

It is easy to imagine Clara's emotion. The step which she had just taken was simply heroic, for she knew to what persecutions from her family she was exposing herself, and what she had seen of the life of the Brothers Minor was a sufficient warning of the distresses to which she was exposing herself in espousing poverty. No doubt she interpreted the words of the service in harmony with her own thoughts:

"Surely they are my people," said Jehovah.
"Children who will not be faithless!"
In none of their afflictions were they without succor.
And the angel that is before his face saved them. [4]

Then Francis read again the words of Jesus to his disciples; she vowed to conform her life to them; her hair was cut off; all was finished. A few moments after, Francis conducted her to a house of Benedictine nuns[5] at an hour's distance, where she was to remain provisionally and await the progress of events.

The very next morning Favorino, her father, arrived with a few friends, inveighing, supplicating, abusing everybody. She was unmovable, showing so much courage that at last they gave up the thought of carrying her off by main force.

She was not, however, at the end of her tribulations. Had this scene frightened the Benedictines? We cannot tell, but less than a fortnight after we find her in another convent, that of Sant-Angelo in Panso, at Assisi.[6] A week after Easter, Agnes, her younger sister, joined her there, decided in her turn to serve poverty. Francis received her into the Order. This time the father's fury was horrible. With a band of relatives he invaded the convent, but neither abuse nor blows could subdue this child of fourteen. In spite of her cries they dragged her away. She fainted, and the little inanimate body suddenly seemed to them so heavy that they abandoned it in the midst of the fields, some laborers looking with pity on the painful scene, until Clara, whose cry God had heard, hastened to succor her sister.