On the third day, a great wonder being on all that assemblage, she bade them leave her for a while, and the holy Pope Urban came and prayed with her and blessed her. And he begged her to tell him how it was that she had survived those cruel strokes so long. And Cecilia, looking up at him most lovingly, replied: “I asked the Lord to give me these three days, that I might give to your Beatitude my last treasure, the poor whom I nourished, and who will miss me; and I also give you this my house that you may consecrate it to be a Church to the Lord for ever and ever.” Then she thanked her Saviour for all His love, and especially for having “deigned to give her a part in the glory of the athletes, for having crowned her with the lilies of virginity and the roses of martyrdom.” A little faintness came over her then. She had never moved from the attitude in which she had fallen, and was lying on her right side, but her hands had been raised in prayer. Now they fell, still clasped, on the folds of the golden robe so rosy with blood; she turned her lovely face to the ground, that only God might see the ecstasy of her reunion with Him, and thus she died. Pope Urban attended personally to every detail of her burial. A cypress-wood coffin was prepared, and in this she was laid by the priests in attendance. Urban would not permit any change from the attitude of virginal modesty in which she had expired, so with tender care the consecrated hands raised her and laid her body in the coffin, just as it was, on the right side, with the face turned to the ground. The cloths dipped in her blood were rolled up and placed at her feet, a profusion of rich ointments and perfumes was shed around her, and then the fragrant casket was closed. Under cover of night the Pontiff had it carried out to the cemetery of Saint Calixtus on the Appian Way, wishing to honour her zealous apostleship for Christ by burying her close to the tomb where he had laid his predecessor, the martyr Pope, St. Zephyrinus. The cemetery of Pretextatus, where Valerianus and Tiburtius had been buried, was close at hand, and Urban, to commemorate the pure love that had united them on earth, made Cecilia’s tomb at the extreme confine of the Calixtus catacomb, where its direction turned towards the older one. Fearing desecration, perhaps prophetically foreseeing that which threatened the resting-places of martyrs in the invasion of the Arian heretics some two hundred years later, he closed the tomb with one large slab of stone and left it for the moment bare of all inscription; doubtless he intended to place one there immediately, but had no time to do so before his own death.[16] Those who had loved her needed not to see her name; they came day after day to weep there and ask for her prayers; but God had inspired His servant to protect and hide her blessed remains from all the enemies of the Church.