[Illustration: VINE CULTIVATION (CASENTINO)]
In our progress we passed several roadside shrines, but we found them despoiled of their original contents. We afterwards found that all the open-air shrines of the Casentino have been dealt with in the same manner. In some a rude print or a small china figure has been substituted for the older object of reverence; oftener the niche is empty and the structure is falling to ruin.
For several miles our road was through land that had been brought under cultivation. Then it ascended through a wood, and beyond this we reached the uneven grassland of the mountains. The genial warmth of the lowland and the unchecked influence of spring were left behind. The grass on the hillocks was green, but in the hollows it was brown and sodden, as though the numerous patches of snow had only just shrunk away from it. Only here and there, close to the edge of the snow, purple crocuses were bursting through the soft mould of the rifts in the greensward. The silence of mountain solitude reigned undisturbed except for the sound of trickling, dripping water.
The plateau, at the end of which the convent of La Verna stands, is visible from afar. It was between one and two in the afternoon when we left the main road and soon afterwards reached the little inn that stands on the confines of the monastic property. Within its walls, at the foot of the rock, which is here almost perpendicular, a small chapel commemorates the spot where St Francis and his companions paused to rest before scaling the height. “And immediately flocks of birds came from all parts,” the legend tells us, “and with singing and beating of their wings they showed the greatest joy and gladness, and surrounded St Francis in such a manner that some perched on his head, some on his shoulders, some on his arms and some on his legs, and some around his feet. His companions marvelled, but St Francis, all joyful in his spirit, said to them--I see that it is pleasing to our Lord that we live in this solitary mountain, since so much joy is shown at our arrival by our little sisters and brothers, the birds.”
This incident in the legend of the saint illustrates one of the most lovable traits in his character--the sense of religious fellowship which united him to whatever claimed his attention in nature. The beasts of the earth, and the birds of the air, fire and water, the wind, the sun, the moon and the clouds--he felt the impress of the divine spirit in every one of them. In the happiest and in the most trying hours of his life he was ever ready to recognise the beneficence of the divine purpose in everything around him. It was this attitude of mind which enabled him not to shrink when the red-hot iron was drawn across his temple in the hope of saving his eye-sight. It was this attitude of mind which inspired him to compose the _Canticle of the Sun_, a hymn which in its simple framing and passionate utterances bears the stamp of the religious fervour of a new era.