(I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, "To-day, two infants were born--this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst"-- of having been invented by the _zelanti_ against Brother Elias.

It is evident that such a story is aimed at some one.

Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis ?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at Assisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (_suebat cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere_, Salimbene, p.
402) he was _scriptor_ at Bologna (Eccl., 13).

And from the psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master.