All seemed to be paralyzed.
"You, here! You have been silent, now it is my turn! I have tried to avoid this, but God brings me to it--let God be the judge!" The youth was breathing laboriously, but with a hand of iron he held down the Franciscan, who was struggling vainly to free himself.
"My heart beats tranquilly, my hand is sure," he began, looking around him.

"First, is there one among you, one who has not loved his father, who was born in such shame and humiliation that he hates his memory?
You see?
You understand this silence?
Priest of a God of peace, with your mouth full of sanctity and religion and your heart full of evil, you cannot know what a father is, or you might have thought of your own! In all this crowd which you despise there is not one like you! You are condemned!" The persons surrounding him, thinking that he was about to commit murder, made a movement.
"Away!" he cried again in a threatening voice.

"What, do you fear that I shall stain my hands with impure blood?
Have I not told you that my heart beats tranquilly?
Away from us! Listen, priests and judges, you who think yourselves other men and attribute to yourselves other rights: my father was an honorable man,--ask these people here, who venerate his memory.

My father was a good citizen and he sacrificed himself for me and for the good of his country.

His house was open and his table was set for the stranger and the outcast who came to him in distress! He was a Christian who always did good and who never oppressed the unprotected or afflicted those in trouble.