On the other side, carefully preserved within wire netting, is the famous Garden of Roses, and standing in the midst, like ruins of some temple, are the four pillars which in olden times supported a roof above the Portiuncula. In the days when St. Francis had his hut close by, this cultivated garden was only a wilderness of brambles in the forest, and the legend tells how the saint being assailed by terrible temptation as he knelt at prayer through the watches of the night, ran out into the snow and rolled naked among the brambles and thorns to quiet the fierce battle within his soul. The moonlight suddenly broke through the clouds shining upon clusters of white and red roses, their leaves stained with the saint's blood which had fallen upon the brambles and produced these thornless flowers, while celestial spirits filled the air with hymns of praise. Throwing a silken garment over him and flooding his pathway with heavenly radiance, the angel led him to the Portiuncula where the Madonna and Child appeared to him in a vision. The legend has been often illustrated, Overbeck's fresco on the façade of the chapel records it yet again where St. Francis is represented as offering to the Virgin the roses he had gathered. [Illustration: THE GARDEN OF THE ROSES AT STA. MARIA DEGLI ANGELI] A few steps beyond the Garden of the Roses lies the Chapel of the Roses built by St. Bonaventure over the hut of St. Francis, which was afterwards enlarged by St. Bernardine. The place where he spent his few moments of repose and so many hours of prayer, can be seen through the grating on a level with the chapel floor, and resembles more the lair of a wild animal than an ordinary abode of man; but such places were dear to him, and he rejoiced in having the open forest outside his cell into which he wandered at all times of the day and night, and where the brethren, ever curious to watch their beloved and holy master, could see him on moonlight nights holding sweet converse with heavenly spirits. The choir of the chapel is frescoed by Lo Spagna who repeated again the figures of the first franciscans, adding those of St. Bonaventure, St. Bernardine of Siena, St. Louis of Toulouse, and St. Anthony of Padua on the left wall, and St. Clare and St. Elisabeth of Hungary on the right wall. The fresco on the ceiling is said to be by Pinturricchio. The paintings in the nave by Tiberio d'Assisi are faintly coloured and a poor example of Umbrian art; only the last scene is interesting, where St. Francis publishes the indulgence in the presence of the seven bishops, as it gives an accurate representation of the Portiuncula in the fifteenth century with Niccolò da Foligno's fresco still upon the façade. It tells the legend of the "Perdono" which even to the present day plays so important a part in the religious life of Assisi, bringing crowds every year to the Portiuncula for whom the Angeli was finally built. Disentangling