To St Francis, a man amongst men, the lust of the earth was radically allied with pride of class, an inordinate ambitiousness of glory, and a love of luxury. Poverty, as Francis understood it, meant the antithesis of all this. The Lady Poverty (to borrow the Saint’s own imagery) was an outcast; she was the despised of men; and she walked amid the rough ways of the earth with threadbare garments and bruised feet. The story how Francis found his ideal bride and came to love her with chivalric devotion, is too well known to need repetition. The final act in the drama came when one day, riding in the plain before Assisi, he was met by a leper who besought an alms, and, filled with disgust, he at first thought to pass on, but, moved by a nobler impulse, cast himself from his horse, and not only gave the alms, but folded the leper to his breast and embraced him. From that moment he himself has told us that “what had seemed bitter was changed into sweetness of soul and body, and not long afterwards I left the world.”[30] The embrace of the leper marked the final abandonment in Francis’ soul of the sense of separation between himself, the son of the wealthy Bernardone, and the outcasts of society. Henceforth to Francis, the poor and the outcast were human brethren, worthy of a brother’s intimate love and care. In the same moment he cast aside, once for all, his youthful dream of entering the ranks of chivalry, and seeking renown in battle and tournament. Henceforth he would be the servant of his brothers the poor, and “serve the Lord in Poverty and Humility.” The path of renunciation was further determined for him when his new ideal of life clashed with the commercial interests of his family. In the newly-awakened consciousness of his kinship with the poor, he considered his share in the family business as their share, and freely parted with what he had a right to consider his own. Pietro Bernardone, his father, foresaw commercial ruin from such a course, and when he found that Francis was indissolubly wedded to his ideal, promptly disinherited him. Henceforth Francis was without house or property of his own. With the keenness of a soul set free, he at once recognised in his father’s act of disinheritance the charter of his spiritual freedom. “Now in truth can I say: Our Father Who art in Heaven!” Heaven and earth became his when in the moment of abandonment he called God his Father. Thus he cast from himself forever the three dominant tyrannies which in his own age and since, have oppressed the souls of men--wealth, place, and power. He had become in very truth the Poor Man of Assisi, and yet who was richer than he?