12. With the love of the cross, an ardent charity penetrated the heart of St. Francis, and urged him to propagate zealously the Christian faith, and to devote himself to that work, though at the risk of this life and with a certainty of peril. This charity he extended to all men; but the poorest and most repulsive were the special objects of his predilection; so that those seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure whom others are wont to avoid or over-proudly to despise.