Gregory had often been puzzled by the unique unworldliness of St. Francis; his admiration for St. Clare was even more profound, and in reading his letters after leaving the franciscan abbess one forgets that he was over eighty at the time. With him she had gained her point once and for all, but upon his death she had to oppose the wishes of Innocent IV, who did all in his power to merge the franciscan order of Poor Clares into an ordinary Benedictine community. Again it ended in the triumph of St. Clare, and the day before her death she had the joy of receiving the news that the Pope had issued a papal bull sanctioning the rule for which both St. Francis and she had fought; namely, that they were to live absolutely poor without any worldly possession of any kind. "N'est-ce pas," says M. Sabatier, "un des plus beaux tableaux de l'histoire religieuse, que celui de cette femme qui, pendant plus d'un quart de siècle, soutient contre les papes qui se succèdent sur le trône pontifical une lutte de tous les instants; qui demeure également respectueuse et inébranlable, et ne consent à mourir qu'après avoir remporté la victoire?" St. Clare during the remaining years of her life suffered continually from ill-health, and it was from a bed of infirmity that she so ardently prayed the Pope to sanction her rule of poverty, and enjoined the sisterhood to keep its tenets faithfully. Like St. Francis, brave and cheerful to the last, she called her weeping companions around her to give them her final blessing and farewell. Among them knelt the Blessed Agnes, who had come from her nunnery in Florence to assist her sister, and the three holy brethren Leo, Angelo and Juniper. On the 11th of August 1253, the feast of St. Rufino, as she was preparing to leave the world they heard her speak, but so softly that the words were lost to them. "Mother, with whom are you conversing?" asked one of the nuns, and she answered: "Sister, I am speaking with this little soul of mine, now blessed, to whom the glory of paradise is already opening." Then as the evening closed in and they were still watching, a great light was seen to fill the doorway leading from the oratory of St. Clare to her cell; and from out of it came a long procession of white-robed virgins led by the Queen of Heaven, whose head was crowned with a diadem of shining gold, and whose eyes sent forth such splendour as might have changed the night into the brightest day. And as each of the celestial visitors stooped to kiss St. Clare, the watching nuns knew that her soul had already reached its home. * * * * *