The prophet had abdicated in favor of the priest, not indeed without possibility of return, for when a man has once reigned, I would say, thought, in liberty--what other kingdom is there on this earth ?--he makes but an indifferent slave; in vain he tries to submit; in spite of himself it happens at times that he lifts his head proudly, he rattles his chains, he remembers the struggles, sadness, anguish of the days of liberty, and weeps their loss.

Among the sons of St.Francis many were destined to weep their lost liberty, many to die to conquer it again.
FOOTNOTES: [1] The date usually fixed for the approval of the Rule by Innocent III.

is the month of August, 1209.

The Bollandists had thought themselves able to infer it from the account where Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 43) refers to the passage through Umbria of the Emperor Otho IV., on his way to be crowned at Rome (October 4, 1209).

Upon this journey see Boehmer-Ficker, _Regesta Imperii.