For week after week his
mother nursed him; and each night hardly believed that her son would
live to see the light of the next morning. When at last the fever left
him, he was so feeble that for weeks he could not rise from his bed.
Gradually, however, he got better: as he did so the thing that he
desired most of all in the world was to see the lovely country around
Assisi;--the mountains, the Umbrian Plain beneath, the blue skies, the
dainty flowers.
At last one day, with aching limbs and in great feebleness, he crept
out of doors. There were the great Apennine Mountains on the side of
which his city of Assisi was built. There were the grand rocky peaks
pointing to the intense blue sky. There was the steep street with the
houses built of stone of a strange, delicate pink colour, as though
the light of dawn were always on them. There were the dark green olive
trees, and the lovely tendrils of the vines. The gay Italian flowers
were blooming.
Stretching away in the distance was one of the most beautiful
landscapes of the world; the broad Umbrian Plain with its browns and
greens melting in the distance into a bluish haze that softened the
lines of the distant hills.
How he had looked forward to seeing it all, to being in the sunshine,
to feeling the breeze on his hot brow! But what--he wondered--had
happened to him? He looked at it all, but he felt no joy.
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