In proportion as they had felt themselves alone on the road from Rome to Otricoli, they now felt themselves compassed about with the life, the fecundity, the gayety of the country.
The account of Thomas of Celano becomes so animated as it describes the life of Francis at this epoch that one cannot help thinking that at this time he must have seen him, and that this first meeting remained always in his memory as the radiant dawn of his spiritual life.[4] The Brothers had taken to preaching in such places as they came upon along their route.

Their words were always pretty much the same, they showed the blessedness of peace and exhorted to penitence.

Emboldened by the welcome they had received at Rome, which in all innocence they might have taken to be more favorable than it really was, they told the story to everyone they met, and thus set all scruples at rest.
These exhortations, in which Francis spared not his hearers, but in which the sternest reproaches were mingled with so much of love, produced an enormous effect.

Man desires above all things to be loved, and when he meets one who loves him sincerely he very seldom refuses him either his love or his admiration.
It is only a low understanding that confounds love with weakness and compliance.

We sometimes see sick men feverishly kissing the hand of the surgeon who performs an operation upon them; we sometimes do the same for our spiritual surgeons, for we realize all that there is of vigor, pity, compassion in the tortures which they inflict, and the cries which they force from us are quite as much of gratitude as of pain.
Men hastened from all parts to hear these preachers who were more severe upon themselves than on anyone else.