His sad time each year was the Carnival, those days of disorder and licence which, like a torrent, carry away into excesses of one sort or another even the staunchest and most fervent in their piety. He felt, indeed, like Job of old, who offered sacrifices and prayers, and afflicted both body and soul with fasts and mortifications, while his children were passing their time in revellings and banquetings. As our Blessed Father was all things to all men, and weak with the weak, so he also burned with the scandalised; and who would not be scandalised to see the Pagan festival of the Bacchanalia celebrated among Christians? For this very reason, as we know, the name of God is blasphemed by many, and the Catholic religion unjustly blamed, as if it permitted what it cannot prevent, as if it commanded what it tolerates with reluctance, as if it ordered what it detests and declaims against by the mouth of its preachers. Perhaps you would like to hear the words in which our Blessed Father pours forth his lamentations over this period of the year, so full of disorder and confusion. "I must tell you," he says, "that now I have come to my sorrowful time. From the Epiphany even to Lent my heart is full of strange sensations. Miserable and detestable as I am, I am weighed down with grief to see the loss of so much devotion, I mean the falling off of so many souls. These two last Sundays I have found our communions diminished by one-half. That has grieved me very much, for even if those who made them do not give way to sin, why, and for what, do they now omit them? For nothing at all--out of mere vanity, it is that which grieves me." AN INSTANCE OF HIS COMPASSION FOR ANIMALS. The Church inculcates on the Clergy perfect gentleness and kindness. This is why they may never take any part in anything involving bloodshed. His having shed the blood of a fellow man, even when required by the interests of justice, is considered a canonical irregularity, and deprives a Priest of the right to celebrate Holy Mass. Blessed Francis was remarkable for his gentleness and tender-heartedness towards all creatures. I will give you a little instance of this. One day he was at my house, when a nobleman of distinction called upon us. This gentleman was at the head of a hunting party, and seeing in my orchard a roebuck which had been given to me and which was peacefully feeding, he proposed, as he said, to amuse our Blessed Father by setting his dogs upon the poor animal, and to confine the hunt to my orchard.