"See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are two sons and two daughters, with the servant and the maid carrying all the baggage." With this child-like representation of the tyranny of material cares which he had escaped, he finally put away the temptation.[7] There is nothing to show whether or not we should fix at the same epoch another incident which legend gives as taking place at Sartiano.

One day a brother of whom he asked, "Whence do you come ?" replied, "From your cell." This simple answer was enough to make the vehement lover of Poverty refuse to occupy it again.

"Foxes have holes," he loved to repeat, "and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man had not where to lay his head.

When the Lord spent forty days and forty nights praying and fasting in the desert, he built himself neither cell nor house, but made the side of a rock his shelter."[8] It would be a mistake to think, as some have done, that as time went on Francis changed his point of view.

Certain ecclesiastical writers have assumed that since he desired the multiplication of his Order, he for that very reason consented to its transformation.