And the master in theology, bowing his head, covered himself with his cowl as a sign of obedience, and sat down to listen to Egidio.
Clara felt a great joy in this; it seemed to her that she was once again living in St.Francis's days.[34] The little coterie was kept up until her death; she expired in the arms of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginepro.
In her last sufferings and her dying visions she had the supreme happiness of being surrounded by those who had devoted their lives to the same ideal as she.[35] In her will her life shows itself that which we have seen it--a daily struggle for the defence of the Franciscan idea.

We see how courageous and brave was this woman who has always been represented as frail, emaciated, blanched like a flower of the cloister.[36] She defended Francis not only against others, but also against himself.
In those hours of dark discouragement which so often and so profoundly disturb the noblest souls and sterilize the grandest efforts, she was beside him to show him his way.

When he doubted his mission and thought of fleeing to the heights of repose and solitary prayer, it was she who showed him the ripening harvest with no reapers to gather it in, men going astray with no shepherd to lead them, and drew him once again into the train of the Galilean, into the number of those who _give their lives a ransom for many_.[37] Yet this love with which at St.Damian Francis felt himself surrounded frightened him at times.

He feared that his death, making too great a void, would imperil the institution itself, and he took pains to remind the sisters that he would not be always with them.

One day when he was to preach to them, instead of entering the pulpit he caused some ashes to be brought, and after having spread them around him and scattered some on his head, he intoned the _Miserere_, thus reminding them that he was but dust and would soon return to dust.[38] But in general it is at St.Damian that St.Francis is the most himself; it is under the shade of its olive-trees, with Clara caring for him, that he composes his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called the most perfect utterance of modern religious sentiment, the "Canticle of the Sun." FOOTNOTES: [1] Easy as it is to seize the large outlines of her life, it is with difficulty that one makes a detailed and documentary study of it.