trouble. Animals said they, why, how can they be sacred; things that you
call beef and mutton when they have left off being oxen and sheep, and
sell for so much a pound? They scoffed at this mad neighbour, looked at
each other waggishly and shrugged their shoulders as he passed along the
street. Well! then, all of a sudden, as you may say, one morning he
walked into the town--Gubbio it was--with a wolf pacing at his heels--a
certain wolf which had been the terror of the country-side and eaten I
don't know how many children and goats. He walked up the main street
till he got to the open Piazza in front of the great church. And the
long grey wolf padded beside him with a limp tongue lolling out between
the ragged palings which stood him for teeth. In the middle of the
Piazza was a fountain, and above the fountain a tall stone crucifix. Our
friend mounted the steps of the cross in the alert way he had (like a
little bird, the story says) and the wolf, after lapping apologetically
in the basin, followed him up three steps at a time. Then with one arm
around the shaft to steady himself, he made a fine sermon to the
neighbours crowding in the Square, and the wolf stood with his fore-paws
on the edge of the fountain and helped him. The sermon was all about
wolves (naturally) and the best way of treating them. I fancy the people
came to agree with it in time; anyhow when the man died they made a
saint of him and built three churches, one over another, to contain his
body. And I believe it is entirely his fault that there are a
hundred-and-three cats in the convent-garden of San Lorenzo in Florence.
For what are you to do? Animals are sacred, says Saint Francis. Animals
are sacred, but cats have kittens; and so it comes about that the people
who agree with Saint Francis have to suffer for the people who don't.

The Canons of San Lorenzo agree with Saint Francis, and it seems to me
that they must suffer a good deal. The convent is large; it has a great
mildewed cloister with a covered-in walk all around it built on arches.