The patience and meekness of Saint Francis
in this life of self-enforced privation and suffer-
ing are almost unexampled. No word of com-
plaint ever escaped his lips ; nay, the greater
the privation and suffering the greater the joy
he felt. His ideal of happiness is well expressed
in that oft-quoted story from the Fioretti which
tells us how, walking one day from Perugia to
Assisi with Fra Leone, he said that happiness
did not consist in reputation for holiness, nor
in the working of miracles, nor in universal
knowledge, nor in the gift of prophecy, but in
receiving insults, rebuffs, beatings and hard-
ships of all kinds, with humility, gladness and
love : " Write down, O Brother Leone, that this
is perfect joy."

This constant spirit of cheerfulness and joy
was one of the most striking things about his
character. Always and everywhere, in the hut
of the poor, in the palace of the rich, in the dens
of those outcasts of mediaeval society, the le-
pers, he wore a sweet and smiling face. In his
Rule he made joy a part of Christian duty, and
often rebuked his followers for being melan-
choly. " My brother, why this sad face? Have
you committed sin? That concerns only God



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and yourself. Go and pray. But before me and
your brothers always wear a mien full of holy
joy. For it is not proper when one is in the ser-
vice of God to be of a sullen and morose counte-
nance." These words remind us involuntarily of
that scene in Dante's Inferno where the souls
of the melancholy are plunged beneath the
surface of a gloomy marsh. " There is perhaps
nothing," says Ruskin, speaking of this pas-
sage of Dante, "more notable than the pro-
found truth couched under the attachment of
so terrible a punishment to sadness or sorrow.
