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Fra Giovanni humbled himself, saying:

“It is most true I am a fool, and do nothing but what is wrong.”

Then Satan asked him:

“What think you of poverty? “–and the holy man replied:

“I think it is a pearl of price.”

But Satan retorted:

“You pretend poverty is a great good; yet all the while you are robbing the poor of a part of this great good, by giving them alms.”

Fra Giovanni pondered over this, and said:

“The alms I give, I give to Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose poverty cannot be minished, for it is infinite. It gushes from Him as from an inexhaustible fountain; and its waters flow freely for His favourite sons. And these shall be poor always, according to the promise of the Son of God. In giving to the poor, I am giving not to men, but to God, as the citizens pay tax to the Podestà, and the rate is for the City, which of the money it so receives supplies the town’s needs. Now what I give is for paving the City of God. It is a vain thing to be poor in deed, if we be not poor in spirit. The gown of frieze, the cord, the sandals, the wallet and the wooden bowl are only signs and symbols. The Poverty I love is spiritual, and I address her as Lady, because she is an idea, and all beauty resides in this same idea.”

Satan smiled, and replied:

“Your maxims, Fra Giovanni, are the maxims of a wise man of Greece, Diogenes by name, who taught at their Universities in the times when Alexander of Macedon was waging his wars.”

And Satan said again:

“Is it true you despise the goods of this world?”

And Fra Giovanni replied:

“I do despise them.”

And Satan said to him:

“Look you! in scorning these, you are scorning at the same time the hard-working men who produce them, and so doing, fulfil the order given to your first father, Adam, when he was commanded, ‘In the sweat of thy face, thou shalt eat bread.’ Seeing work is good, the fruit of this work is good too. Yet you work not, neither have any care for the work of others. But you receive and give alms, in contempt of the law laid on Adam and on his seed through the ages.”

“Alas!” sighed Brother Giovanni, “I am laden with crimes, and at once the most wicked and the most foolish man in all the world. Wherefore never heed me, but read in the Book. Our Lord said, ‘Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin.’ Again he said, ‘Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.'”

Then Satan lifted up his hand, with the gesture of one who disputes and prepares to count off his arguments on the fingers. And he said:

“Giovanni, Giovanni! what was written in one sense, you read in another; you are less like a Doctor at his desk than an ass at the manger. So must I correct you, as a master corrects his scholar. It is written the lilies of the field have no need to spin–because they are beautiful, and beauty is a virtue. Again it is written how Mary is not to do the household tasks, because she is doing lovingly to Him who has come to see her. But you, who are not beautiful nor yet instructed, like Mary, in the things of love, you drag out a contemptible existence wandering the highways.”

Giovanni made reply:

“Sir! just as a Painter will depict on a narrow panel of wood an entire city with its houses and towers and walls, so you have painted in a few words my soul and my similitude with a wondrous exactness. And I am altogether what you describe. But if I followed perfectly the rule etablished by St. Francis, that Angel of God, and if I practised spiritual poverty to the full, I should be the lily of the fields and I should have the good part of Mary.”