Members of the secular clergy, monks, learned men, rich men even, often mingled in the impromptu audiences gathered in the streets and public places.

All were not converted, but it would have been very difficult for any of them to forget this stranger whom they met one day upon their way, and who in a few words had moved them to the very bottom of their hearts with anxiety and fear.
Francis was in truth, as Celano says, the bright morning star.

His simple preaching took hold on consciences, snatched his hearers from the mire and blood in which they were painfully trudging, and in spite of themselves carried them to the very heavens, to those serene regions where all is silent save the voice of the heavenly Father.

"The whole country trembled, the barren land was already covered with a rich harvest, the withered vine began again to blossom."[5] Only a profoundly religious and poetic soul (is not the one the other ?) can understand the transports of joy which overflowed the souls of St.
Francis's spiritual sons.
The greatest crime of our industrial and commercial civilization is that it leaves us a taste only for that which may be bought with money, and makes us overlook the purest and truest joys which are all the time within our reach.

The evil has roots far in the past.