I saw them coming from every direction, filling all the roads." Whatever the biographies may say, Francis was far from foreseeing the sorrows that were to follow this rapid increase of his Order.

The maiden leaning with trembling rapture on her lover's arm no more dreams of the pangs of motherhood than he thought of the dregs he must drain after quaffing joyfully the generous wine of the chalice.[13] Every prosperous movement provokes opposition by the very fact of its prosperity.

The herbs of the field have their own language for cursing the longer-lived plants that smother them out; one can hardly live without arousing jealousy; in vain the new fraternity showed itself humble, it could not escape this law.
When the brethren went up to Assisi to beg from door to door, many refused to give to them, reproaching them with desiring to live on the goods of others after having squandered their own.

Many a time they had barely enough not to starve to death.

It would even seem that the clergy were not entirely without part in this opposition.