She established two monasteries at Bethlehem, one of which was for women. Here, with her daughter, she lived a life of rigid abstinence. Her nuns had nothing they could call their own. If they paid too much attention to dress Paula said, "A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul." To her credit, she was more lenient with others than with herself. Jerome admits she went to excess, and prudently observes: "Difficult as it is to avoid extremes, the philosophers are quite right in their opinion that virtue is a mean and vice an excess, or, as we may express it in one short sentence, in nothing too much." Paula swept floors and toiled in the kitchen. She slept on the ground, covered by a mat of goat's hair. Her weeping was incessant. As she meditated over the Scriptures, her tears fell so profusely that her sight was endangered. Jerome warned her to spare her eyes, but she said: "I must disfigure that face which, contrary to God's commandment, I have painted with rouge, white lead and antimony." If this be a sin against the Almighty, bear witness, O ye daughters of Eve! Her love for the poor continued to be the motive of her great liberality. In fact, her giving knew no bounds. Fuller wisely remarks that "liberality must have banks as well as a stream;" but Paula said: "My prayer is that I may die a beggar, leaving not a penny to my daughter and indebted to strangers for my winding sheet." Her petition was literally granted, for she died leaving her daughter not only without a penny but overwhelmed in a mass of debts. As Jerome approaches the description of Paula's death, he says: "Hitherto the wind has all been in my favor and my keel has smoothly ploughed through the heaving sea. But now my bark is running upon the rocks, the billows are mountain high, and imminent shipwreck awaits me." Yet Paula, like David, must go the way of all the earth. Surrounded by her followers chanting psalms, she breathed her last. An immense concourse of people attended her funeral. Not a single monk lingered in his cell. Thus, the twenty hard years of self-torture for this Roman lady of culture ended in the rest of the grave. Upon her tombstone was placed this significant inscription: "Within this tomb a child of Scipio lies, A daughter of the far-famed Pauline house, A scion of the Gracchi, of the stock Of Agamemnon's self, illustrious: Here rests the lady Paula, well beloved Of both her parents, with Eustochium For daughter; she the first of Roman dames Who hardship chose and Bethlehem for Christ."