The next step in his journey toward Rome is described at great length in lives of the saint, yet it is not wholly intelligible. Instead of going to Barcelona, where one took ship, he went to Manresa, and his pilgrimage was postponed for nearly a year. He did not take the high road to Barcelona, says his biographer, lest he should meet the people coming to the shrine: a theory which would not only require another theory to explain it, but which gives no explanation of the year's delay. Others think that he heard there was plague in the port; though the plague would not last a year, and one may question if Ignatius would flee it. The truth seems to be that the idea of spending his life in the East was already yielding in his mind to another design: the plan of forming a Society was dimly breaking on him. He had studied the monastic life in the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat, and had brought away with him a book, written by one of their abbots, over which he would brood to some purpose. He had a vague feeling that the appointed field of adventure might be Europe. However that may be, he took a road that led away from Barcelona, and as he limped and suffered, for he had discarded the mule and would make his pilgrimage afoot, he asked where he could find a hospital (in those days a mixture of hostel and hospital). He was taken to Manresa, a picturesque little town in one of the valleys of the district, where he lodged in the hospital for a few days, and then, instead of going to Barcelona, found an apartment and became a local celebrity. The beggar to whom he had given his clothes had, naturally, been arrested, and Ignatius was forced to tell his strange story, in order to clear the man and himself. The story grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, and it was presently understood that the dirty, barefoot, ill-clad beggar, who asked a little coarse bread at the doors, and retired to pray and scourge himself, was one of the richest grandees of the eastern provinces. Children followed "Father Sackcloth" about the streets; men sneered at his uncut nails and his long, wild black locks and thin face; women wept, and asked his prayers.