city besieged for to have been taken. And when S. Clare, the handmaid of Jesu Christ, heard the tidings, she had great pity and did do call her sisters and said to them : ' Right sweet daughters, we receive daily many benefits of this city, and it should be a great unkindness in us if we succoured it not in this great need as much as we may.' Then commanded she to bring ashes, and said to her sisters that they should discover their heads, and she herself first cast great plenty of ashes upon her head, and after, upon the heads of all the others, and said to them: 'Now go, fair daughters, and with all your hearts require and pray ye to our Lord that he will deliver this city.' And then every each by themselves, in great weepings and tears, made their orisons and prayers devoutly to our Lord, in such wise that he kept and defended the city, that on the morn the host departed out of the country, and it was not long after that they all were dead and slain.
It should not be according that we should hele and keep secret the marvellous virtue of her prayer, by the which at the beginning of her conversion she converted a soul to God. For she had a sister younger than herself was, whose conversation she much desired, and in all her prayers that she made she prayed at the beginning with all her heart to our Lord that like as she and her sister had been in the world of one heart and of one will, that it might please the Father of mercy that Agnes, her sister, whom she had left in the world, might despise the world, and savour the sweetness of God, so that she might have no will to marry her, save only to God
