He made of it a belt, and realized that he had been chosen to lead back into its primitive purity the Third Order of Saint Francis.

He renounced the beauty of women, the delights of poetry, the brightness of glory, and studied the life and the doctrine of Saint Francis.

However, he has sold to his editor a book entitled 'Les Blandices', which contains, he says, the description of all sorts of loves.

He flatters himself that in it he has shown himself a criminal with some elegance.

But far from harming his mystic undertakings, this book favors them in this sense, that, corrected by his later work, he will become honest and exemplary; and the gold that he has received in payment, which would not have been paid to him for a more chaste volume, will serve for a pilgrimage to Assisi." Madame Martin asked how much of this story was really true.