St. Francis seeing the devotion and steady vocation of both Clare and Agnes, and doubtless foreseeing that many would follow their example, began to seek for some shelter where they could lead a life of prayer and labour. Again the Benedictines of Mount Subasio came forward with a gift, offering another humble sanctuary which the saint had repaired some years before. This was San Damiano, a chapel so old that none could tell its origin; the vague legend that it stands on the site of a pagan necropolis seems confirmed by a lofty fragment of Roman masonry which juts up on the roadside between the Porta Nuova and San Damiano. With his own hands St. Francis built a few rude cells near the chapel, resembling the cluster of huts by the Portiuncula, and here the "Poor Ladies" were to pass their days in prayer and manual labour. The little humble grey stone building among the olive trees with the pomgranates flowering against its walls, so different to a convent of the present day, must have seemed to Clare the realisation of a freer life than ever she had known before. Others felt its charm and before long several friends had joined her besides Bianca Guelfucci, while upon the death of Count Favorino, Madonna Ortolana received the habit from the hands of St. Francis together with her youngest daughter Beatrice. The fame of the order spread far and wide, gaining so many novices that several new houses were founded in Italy even during the first few years. In those early days St. Clare was given no written law to follow, but like the brethren she and her nuns learnt all the perfection of a religious life from St. Francis, who would often stop at San Damiano on his way to and from the town. He did not allow them to go beyond their boundaries, but a busy life was to be passed in their cells; owning nothing, they were to depend entirely upon what the brothers could beg for them in the town and country round, and when provisions were scarce they fasted. In return the nuns spun the grey stuff for the habits of the friars and the linen for their altars; and after St. Francis received the Stigmata, St. Clare fashioned sandals for him with space for the nails so that he might walk with more ease. Often the poor came to seek help at her hands, and many times the sick were tended in a little mud hut near her cell which she used as a hospital. Silently her life was passed, and to those who looked on from the outside perhaps it might have seemed of small avail compared with the very apparent results of St. Francis' endeavours to help his fellow creatures. But very quietly she was guiding the women of mediæval Italy towards higher aims, for even those who could not follow her into the cloister were aided in their lives at home by the thought of the pure-souled gentle nun of San Damiano. Not the least important part of her work was the womanly sympathy and help which she gave to St. Francis. He turned to her when in trouble, and it was she who encouraged him to continue preaching to the people when, at one time he thought that his vocation was to be a life of solitary prayer and not of constant contact with mankind. He counted on her prayers, and trusting in her counsel went forward once more to preach the words of redemption. From her lonely cell she watched his work with tender solicitude, and when blind and ill he came for the last time to San Damiano she tended to his wants in a little hut she erected for him not far from the convent whence, across the vineyard and olive grove which separated them, the first strains of his glorious Canticle to the Sun came to her one morning. Her gentle influence played an important part in his life, giving him a friendship which is one of the most beautiful things to dwell on in their lives. Some have sneered at its purity, and compared so ideal a connection to a commonplace mediæval tale of monk and nun; but it is degrading even to hint at such an ending to the love of these two for each other, and impossible to believe it after reading M. Sabatier's beautiful chapter on St. Clare, where he touches, in some of his most charming pages, upon a side of St. Francis' character that most biographers have but little understood.