But such a revival of innocence and
sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The
enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight
nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were
needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis,
glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays
so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and
contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it
because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the
experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now
beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism,
whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in
the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North,
from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that
has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in
particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his
lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad,
during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an
ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.
* St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of
mendicant friars.--Trans.
While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.
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