were stealthily engaged in hiding the body of St. Francis in the very bowels of the mountain, where for five centuries it remained unseen and undisturbed. Till far into the night the people continued to murmur; the bewildered friars asked each other what this strange behaviour of Elias meant, and the only people who preserved any appearance of calmness were Messer il Podestà of Assisi and his priors, who smiled to see how well the plot had worked. It was not long before the scandal reached the ears of Pope Gregory. The enemies of Elias painted the story in glowing colours, and the Pope expressed himself greatly shocked at sacrilegious hands having been laid upon the holy body of the saint. He blamed the magistrates for allowing such a tumult to arise, and called upon them to give due explanation of their conduct within a fortnight at the court of Rome under pain of their city being laid under an interdict. The Pope's Brief caused consternation, and his accusations of their ingratitude for past favour rankled deeply. We are not told how the anger of the Pope was pacified, but no doubt both Elias and the Podestà explained satisfactorily the reasons for so strange a burial, as Assisi continued to enjoy the patronage of the Holy See. The efforts of Elias to ensure the safety of the body of St. Francis had been eminently successful, and Gregory could hardly fail to pardon the unusual manner in which this had been obtained. Out of the mysterious events of that day of tumult grew a legend which lasted until the body of St. Francis was finally discovered five centuries later. It was believed that a church far surpassing the other two in grandeur and beauty had been built beneath them by Elias, and that St. Francis risen from his tomb stood in the midst, his hands crossed upon his breast, his head thrown back, gazing eternally towards the sky. The Umbrians, refusing to believe that their saint could suffer the common lot of mortals, loved to think of him as "almost alive," waiting for the last call, surrounded by the glorious beauty of a hidden church which they had never seen and only dimly pictured to themselves. Vasari refers to this "invisible church" described to him by the awe-struck citizens, when he mentions that "the tomb containing the body of the glorious saint is in the lowest church where no one enters, and whose doors are walled up"; and in the beginning of his description of the Basilica, he speaks of three ranges of buildings placed one above the other, the lowest of all being subterranean, which is curious as showing how closely he followed tradition regarding the Assisan church. Padre Angeli so unhesitatingly accepted the story that in his "Collis Paradisi" he drew from imagination a plan, together with a picture of the "invisible church." It represents a long vaulted hall somewhat recalling the architecture of the Upper Church, at the end of which is St. Francis standing upon his tomb in a recess corresponding to a kind