What follows is worthy of the beginning. The lords, in consideration of a small periodical payment, should renounce all the feudal rights; the inhabitants of the villages subject to Assisi were put on a par with those of the city, foreigners were protected, the assessment of taxes was fixed. On Wednesday, November 9, 1210, this agreement was signed and sworn to in the public place of Assisi; it was made in such good faith that exiles were able to return in peace, and from this day we find in the city registers the names of those _emigres_ who, in 1202, had betrayed their city and provoked the disastrous war with Perugia. Francis might well be happy. Love had triumphed, and for several years there were at Assisi neither victors nor vanquished. In the mystic marriages which here and there in history unite a man to a people, something takes place of which the transports of sense, the delirium of love, seem to be the only symbol; a moment comes in which saints, or men of genius, feel unknown powers striving mightily within them; they strive, they seek, they struggle until, triumphing over all obstacles, they have forced trembling, swooning humanity to conceive by them. This moment had come to St. Francis. FOOTNOTES: [1] 1 Cel., 34; 3 Soc., 53; Bon., 39. [2] Probably at Otricoli, which lies on the high-road between Rome and Spoleto. Orte is an hour and a half further on. It is the ancient _Otriculum_, where many antiquities have been found. [3] 1 Cel., 35; Bon., 40 and 41. [4] The only road connecting Celano with Rome, as well as with all Central and Northern Italy, passes by Aquila, Rieti, and Terni, where it joins the high-roads leading from the north toward Rome. [5] 1 Cel., 36 and 37; 3 Soc., 54; Bon., 45-48. [6] Isaiah, lv., 2.