Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/443

CHAP. XVIII was glad with an invincible gaiety of spirit. So Francis laughed and joked in prison till his fellow-prisoners thought him crazy, which no whit worried him, as he answered with the glad boast that some day he would be adored by all the world. He showed another side of his inborn nature when he was kind to a certain one of the captives whom the rest detested, and tried to reconcile his fellows with him.

It was soon after his release from this twelvemonth captivity that the sails of Francis's spirit began to fill with still more topping hopes, and then to waver strangely. He naturally fell sick after the privations of a Perugia prison. As he recovered and went about with the aid of a staff, the loveliness of field and vineyard failed to please him. He wondered at himself, and suspected that his former pleasures were follies. But it was not so easy to leave off his previous life, and Francis's thoughts were lured back again to this world's glory; for a certain nobleman of Assisi was about to set out on an expedition to Apulia to win gain and fame, and Francis was inflamed to go with him. In the night he dreamed that his father's house with its heaps of cloth and other wares was filled instead with swords and lances, with glittering shields, helmets and breastplates. He awoke in an ecstasy of joy at the great glory portended by this dream. Then he fitted himself out sumptuously, with splendid garb, bright weapons, new armour, and accoutrements, and in due time set forth with his fellow-adventurers.

Once more he wavered. Before reaching Spoleto he stopped, left the company, turned back on his steps, this time impelled more strongly to seek those things which he was to love through life. He was about twenty-three years old. It was his nature to love everything, fame and applause, power perhaps, and joy; but he had not yet loved worthily. Now his Lord was calling him, the voice at first not very certain, and yet becoming stronger. Francis seems to have seen a vision, in which the vanity of his attachments was made clear, and he learned that he was following a servant instead of the Lord. So his heart replied, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" and then the vision showed him that he should return, for he had