How peaceful it all seemed in comparison to the scene we had just witnessed. The Piazza was full of booths as on a market day, with rows of coloured handkerchiefs, sea-green dresses such as the peasants like, and endless toys and religious objects; old women sat under large green umbrellas selling cakes, and cooks, in white aprons and caps, stood by their pots and pans ready to serve you an excellent meal. From under a tree a man sprang up as we passed with something of the pilgrim's eagerness about him, saying, "See, I will sing you a song and dance for you," shaking his companions from their sleep and snatching up his accordion, he began a wild, warlike dance upon the grass, while the others accompanied him with an endless chant. And so the hours crept on, until once again as the sun went down the pilgrims streamed quietly out of the church, but this time they gathered up their bundles and walked to the ox waggons which were standing ready in the road, and quite silently without delay they seated themselves, fifteen or twenty in a cart, to start upon their long journey home. Never had the town been so deadly still as on the 2nd of August, when the inhabitants had gone down the hill to the church of the Angeli where they sought to obtain their indulgences now the pilgrims had departed. Very quietly they knelt on the marble floor during the High Mass, silently they prayed, and with slow reverent steps they passed in and out of the Portiuncula until the Vesper hour, and the beautiful, calm evening then found them gathered round the altar of their saint. "Pray, ye poor people, chant and pray. If all be but a dream to wake from this were loss for you indeed." FOOTNOTES: [112] St. Francis called the Portiuncula Santa Maria degli Angeli, but now the name is more connected with the large church. See p. 97. [113] St. Dominic was present at this famous gathering, and the _Fioretti_ gives a curious account of the way in which he watched the doings of a brother saint, at first a little inclined to criticise his methods, so different to his own, but finally being won over by the franciscan doctrine of absolute poverty. [114] Those who know the teaching of St. Francis (see _Fioretti_, chap. xiii.) will feel how the saint would have fought against this device for the expiation of sins, invented by the priests of Southern Italy. No Umbrian has ever sunk to such depths of self-abasement, and during all the first days of the "Perdono" festival they keep aloof, waiting till the pilgrims' departure before obtaining their indulgences. APPENDIX To visitors who stay at Assisi for more than the usual hurried day, the following notes of walks and excursions may be of some use. A few of them have been already indicated by M. Paul Sabatier, in a paper printed at Assisi, to explain the sixteenth century map of the town found by him in the Palazzo Pubblico, of which a copy hangs in a room in the Hotel Subasio.