These were moments of exhaustion, when inspiration was silent.
One day he was sitting with his companions, when he began to groan and say: "There is hardly a monk upon earth who perfectly obeys his superior." His companions, much astonished, said: "Explain to us, father, what is perfect and supreme obedience." Then, comparing him who obeys to a corpse, he replied: "Take a dead body, and put it where you will, it will make no resistance; when it is in one place it will not murmur, when you take it away from there it will not object; put it in a pulpit, it will not look up but down; wrap it in purple, it will only be doubly pale."[7] This longing for corpse-like obedience witnesses to the ravages with which his soul had been laid waste; it corresponds in the moral domain to the cry for annihilation of great physical anguish.
The worst was that he was absolutely alone.

Everywhere else the Franciscan obedience is living, active, joyful.[8] He drank this cup to the very dregs, holding sacred the revolts dictated by conscience.

One day in the later years of his life a German friar came to see him, and after having long discussed with him pure obedience: "I ask you one favor," he said to him, "it is that if the Brothers ever come to live no longer according to the Rule you will permit me to separate myself from them, alone or with a few others, to observe it in its completeness." At these words Francis felt a great joy.

"Know," said he, "that Christ as well as I authorize what you have just been asking;" and laying hands upon him, "Thou art a priest forever," he added, "after the order of Melchisedec."[9] We have a yet more touching proof of his solicitude to safeguard the spiritual independence of his disciples: it is a note to Brother Leo.[10] The latter, much alarmed by the new spirit which was gaining power in the Order, opened his mind thereupon to his master, and doubtless asked of him pretty much the same permission as the friar from Germany.

After an interview in which he replied _viva voce_, Francis, not to leave any sort of doubt or hesitation in the mind of him whom he surnamed his little sheep of God, _pecorella di Dio_, wrote to him again: Brother Leo, thy brother Francis wishes thee peace and health.
I reply _yes_, my son, as a mother to her child.