being wrought in the town even when Clare had just passed into girlhood. With the rest of her fellow-citizens, rich and poor, she was destined to feel the potent influence of one who suddenly appeared in their midst like an inspired prophet of old, calling on all to repent, and picturing higher ideals in life than any had hitherto dreamed of. Although her first meeting with St. Francis has not been recorded by any early biographer, we may be sure that from the age of fourteen, and perhaps even before, the story of his doings had been familiar to her, for the stir his conversion made among the people, his quarrels with his father, and the many followers he gained, even among the nobles, were of too extraordinary a nature to pass without comment in the family of the Scifi.[102] Their palace being near the Porta Nuova it is certain that Clare and her younger sister Agnes must have often seen St. Francis pass on his way to San Damiano, carrying the bricks which he had begged from door to door to repair its crumbling walls, and heard him scoffed at by the children and cursed by his angry father. As his fame as a preacher grew the Scifi family hurried with the rest to listen to his sermons in the cathedral, or perhaps even in the market-place, where he would stand upon the steps of the old temple and gather the peasants around him on a market day. But the decisive time arrived in the year 1212, when St. Francis, by then the acknowledged founder of a new order sanctioned by the Pope, and no longer jeered at as a mad enthusiast, came to preach during Lent in the church of San Giorgio. It was the parish church of the Scifi, and the whole family attended every service. Clare was then eighteen, young enough to be carried away by the words of the franciscan and build for herself a life outside her present existence; old enough to have felt unbearable the trammels of a degraded age, and to long, during those years of warfare to which all the cities of the valley were subjected, for an escape to where peace and purity could be found. Only dimly she saw her way to a perfect love of Christ. The preacher's words were addressed to all, but she felt them as an especial call to herself, and unhesitatingly she resolved to seek out the friar at the Portiuncula and ask his help and counsel in what was no easy task. Instinctively knowing her mother could be of no aid, even if she sympathised in her cravings for a more spiritual life, she gained the confidence of her aunt, Bianca Guelfucci, who all through played her part regardless of Count Favorino's possible revenge.