And as the poor creature, being set free, ran to him for refuge, he took it up, caressed it, and finally put it on the ground that it might run away; but it returned to him again and again, so that he was obliged to send it to the neighboring forest before it would consent to return to freedom.[23] One day he was crossing the Lake of Rieti.

The boatman in whose bark he was making the passage offered him a tench of uncommon size.

Francis accepted it with joy, but to the great amazement of the fisherman put it back into the water, bidding it bless God.[24] We should never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into the limpid water of a brook.[27] This perfect lover of poverty permitted one luxury--he even commanded it at Portiuncula--that of flowers; the Brother was bidden not to sow vegetables and useful plants only; he must reserve one corner of good ground for our sisters, the flowers of the fields.

Francis talked with them also, or rather he replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle language crept into the very depth of his heart.[28] The thirteenth century was prepared to understand the voice of the Umbrian poet; the sermon to the birds[29] closed the reign of Byzantine art and of the thought of which it was the image.

It is the end of dogmatism and authority; it is the coming in of individualism and inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to be followed by obstinate reactions, but none the less marking a date in the history of the human conscience.[30] Many among the companions of Francis were too much the children of their century, too thoroughly imbued with its theological and metaphysical methods, to quite understand a sentiment so simple and profound.[31] But each in his degree felt its charm.