My heart
would swell within me and I would weep hot and very bitter tears over the
narrative of the early and sinful part of his life, as we may weep to see a
beloved brother beset by deadly perils. And greater, hence, was the joy,
the exultation, and finally the sweet peace and comfort that I gathered
from the tale of his conversion, of his wondrous works, and of the Three
Companions.
In these pages--so lively was my young imagination and so wrought upon by
what I read--I suffered with him again his agonies of hope, I thrilled with
some of the joy of his stupendous ecstasies, and I almost envied him the
signal mark of Heavenly grace that had imprinted the stigmata upon his
living body.
All that concerned him, too, I read: his Little Flowers, his Testament, The
Mirror of Perfection; but my greatest delight was derived from his Song of
the Creatures, which I learnt by heart.
Oftentimes since have I wondered and sought to determine whether it was the
piety of those lauds that charmed me spiritually, or an appeal to my senses
made by the beauty of the lines and the imagery which the Assisian used in
his writings.
Similarly I am at a loss to determine whether the pleasure I took in
reading of the joyous, perfumed life of that other stigmatized saint, the
blessed Catherine of Siena, was not a sensuous pleasure rather than the
soul-ecstasy I supposed it at the time.
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