A cool arched passage ran round all its four sides, decorated in the grave Byzantine style, with statues of the apostles, mosaics, and frescoes on a golden background. This ornamentation consisted in symbolic pictures from the sacred writings, especially from the Revelations of St. John, the favourite Gospel of that time. Solemn stillness reigned over the place. Life seemed excluded from within these high and strong walls. Cypresses and arbor-vitæ predominated in the groups of trees in the garden, where the song of a bird was never heard. The strict conventual order suffered no bird, lest the sweet song of the nightingale might disturb the pious souls in their devotions. It was Cassiodorus who, already inclined to a severe monastic rule when minister of Theodoric, and full of Biblical learning, had sketched for his friend Valerius the plan for the outer and inner government of this convent--similar to the rules of the monastery which he himself had founded at Squillacium--and had watched over its execution. His pious but severe mind, so alienated from the flesh and the world, was expressed in the smallest details. The twenty widows and maidens who lived here as nuns passed their days in prayer and psalm-singing, chastisement and penitence, and also in works of Christian charity; for they visited the sick and the poor of the neighbourhood, comforting and nursing body and soul. It made a solemn, poetical, but very sad impression upon the beholder when one of these pious nuns came walking through the dark avenue of cypresses, clad in a flowing dark-grey garment, which trailed on the ground, and a white close-fitting kalantika upon her head, a costume which Christendom had received from the Egyptian priests of Isis. Before every cross of the many which were cut in the box-trees the nuns stood still and folded their hands in adoration. They always walked alone, and dumb as shadows they glided past each other when they chanced to meet; for communication was reduced to the absolutely necessary. In the middle of the garden a spring flowed from beneath a dark-coloured rock, surrounded by cypresses; marble seats were fixed in the rock. It was a retired, lovely spot; wild roses formed a sort of arbour, and almost entirely concealed a rough bas-relief sculptured in the rock, representing the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Near this spring sat, eagerly reading in a roll of papyrus, a beautiful maiden, clad in a snow-white garment, held up on the left shoulder by a golden clasp. A spray of ivy was twined in the dark brown hair, which flowed back from the brow in soft waves. It was Valeria. When the columns of her home at Neapolis had been overthrown, she had found an asylum within these strong walls. She had become paler and graver in this lonely dwelling, but her eyes still beamed with all their former beauty.