We made our way out and somehow I was very glad I had come. I had thought all along that it really did not make any difference whether I saw him or not and that I did not care, but after seeing the attitude of the pilgrims and his own peculiar mood I thought it worth while. Pontifex Maximus! The Vicar of Christ! What a long way from the Catacomb-worshiping Christians who had no Pope at all, who gathered together “to sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a God” and who bound themselves by a sacramental oath to commit no thefts, nor robberies, nor adulteries, nor break their word, nor deny a deposit when called upon, and who for nearly three hundred years had neither priest nor altar, nor bishop nor Pope, but just the rumored gospels of Christ. CHAPTER XXXV THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS The Italian hill-cities are such a strange novelty to the American of the Middle West--used only to the flat reaches of the prairie, and the city or town gathered primarily about the railway-station. One sees a whole series of them ranged along the eastern ridge of the Apennines as one travels northward from Rome. All the way up this valley I had been noting examples on either hand but when I got off the train at Assisi I saw what appeared to be a great fortress on a distant hill--the sheer walls of the church and monastery of St. Francis. It all came back to me, the fact that St. Francis had been born here of a well-to-do father, that he had led a gay life in his youth, had had his “vision”--his change of heart--which caused him to embrace poverty, the care of the poor and needy and to follow precisely that idealistic dictum which says: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,... for where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” I had found in one of the little books I had with me, “Umbrian Towns,” a copy of the prayer that he devised for his Order which reads: Poverty was in the crib and like a faithful squire she kept herself armed in the great combat Thou didst wage for our redemption. During Thy passion she alone did not forsake Thee. Mary, Thy Mother, stopped at the foot of the cross, but poverty mounted it with Thee and clasped Thee in her embrace unto the end; and when Thou wast dying of thirst as a watchful spouse she prepared for Thee the gall. Thou didst expire in the ardor of her embraces, nor did she leave Thee when dead, O Lord Jesus, for she allowed not Thy body to rest elsewhere than in a borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg of Thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest poverty. Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be never to possess anything as its own under the sun for the glory of Thy name and to have no other patrimony than begging.