[40] In the _Speculum_, f^o 41a, this story ends with the phrase: _Qui vidit haec scripsit et testimonium perhibet de hiis_. The brother is here called _Frater Jacobus simplex_. Cf. _Conform._, 174b. [41] _Conform._, 51b, 1. Cf. 2 Cel., 2, 4; _Spec._, 110b; _Fior._, 29. * * * * * CHAPTER IX SANTA CLARA Popular piety in Umbria never separates the memory of St. Francis from that of Santa Clara. It is right. Clara[1] was born at Assisi in 1194, and was consequently about twelve years younger than Francis. She belonged to the noble family of the Sciffi. At the age when a little girl's imagination awakes and stirs, she heard the follies of the son of Bernardone recounted at length. She was sixteen when the Saint preached for the first time in the cathedral, suddenly appearing like an angel of peace in a city torn by intestine dissensions. To her his appeals were like a revelation. It seemed as if Francis was speaking for her, that he divined her secret sorrows, her most personal anxieties, and all that was ardent and enthusiastic in the heart of this young girl rushed like a torrent that suddenly finds an outlet into the channel indicated by him. For saints as for heroes the supreme stimulus is woman's admiration. But here, more than ever, we must put away the vulgar judgment which can understand no union between man and woman where the sexual instinct has no part. That which makes the union of the sexes something almost divine is that it is the prefiguration, the symbol, of the union of souls. Physical love is an ephemeral spark, designed to kindle in human hearts the flame of a more lasting love; it is the outer court of the temple, but not the most holy place; its inestimable value is precisely that it leaves us abruptly at the door of the holiest of all as if to invite us to step over the threshold. The mysterious sigh of nature goes out for the union of souls. This is the unknown God to whom debauchees, those pagans of love, offer their sacrifices, and this sacred imprint, even though effaced, though soiled by all pollutions, often saves the man of the world from inspiring as much disgust as the drunkard and the criminal. But sometimes--more often than we think--there are souls so pure, so little earthly, that on their first meeting they enter the most holy place, and once there the thought of any other union would be not merely a descent, but an impossibility. Such was the love of St. Francis and St. Clara. But these are exceptions. There is something mysterious in this supreme purity; it is so high that in holding it up to men one risks speaking to them in an unknown tongue, or even worse.