Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/503

Rh receive him. He refused, however, to take up his abode with his brother at the castle of Loyola; and instead of making use of the bed and provisions which he sent to him at the hospital, he chose to lie on the bed of a poor man, taking care, however, every morning to disarrange the other, as if he had slept in it; and distributed the provisions he received from Loyola amongst the poor, and begged his bread about the town. Once only he went, 'upon compulsion,' to visit the inmates of Loyola, the sight of which renewed the memory of his former life, and inspired him with an ardent love of mortification. In consequence, he forthwith put on a sharp hair shirt, girded himself with a great chain of iron, and disciplined himself every night. He catechised the children, he preached every Sunday, and two or three times in the week besides; until, the churches not being able to contain the great crowds who came to hear him, he was obliged to hold forth in the open fields, 'et auditores arbores complere cogerentur.' The first time he preached, he told the assembly that he had been, for a long time, grievously afflicted by a sin of his youth:—he had, he said, with other boys, broken into a garden, and carried off a quantity of fruit; an offence for which an innocent person was sent to