Assisan and wished to bring great honour to his diocese; so the bishop of Perugia, determining to set the mistake right, began to speak, but he found himself forced by a supernatural power to proclaim the indulgence in the very words of St. Francis. The same thing happened to the other five bishops, and St. Francis then saw his dearest wishes realised. Daily the fame of the Portiuncula increased, and the year 1219 witnessed another immense gathering of people, but this time it was the meeting of the five thousand franciscan friars who came from distant parts to attend the Easter Chapter held by St. Francis in the plain. One of the most vivid and interesting chapters (the xiii) in the _Fioretti_, pictures for us "the camp and army of the knights of God," all busily employed in holy converse about the affairs of the Order. It relates how "in that camp were shelters, roofed with lattice and mat, arranged in separate groups according to the diverse provinces whence came the friars; therefore was this Chapter called the Chapter of the Lattices or of the Mats; their bed was the bare earth, though some had a little straw, their pillows were stones or billets of wood. For which reason the devotion of those who heard or saw them was so great, and so great was the fame of their sanctity, that from the court of the Pope who was then at Perugia, and from other towns in the vale of Spoleto, came many counts, barons and knights, and other men of gentle birth, and much people, and cardinals and bishops and abbots with many other clerics, to see so holy and great a congregation and so humble, the like had never yet been in the world of so many saintly men assembled together: and principally they came to see the head and most holy father of all these holy men...."[113] [Illustration: THE FONTE MARCELLA BY GALEAZZO ALESSI] THE PARDON OF ST. FRANCIS OR "IL PERDONO D'ASSISI."