Very gently she replied that the Lombards had indeed sought for her, but that the Blessed Virgin had protected her sepulchre, so that they had not found it. She bade him persevere in his search, which she promised should soon be rewarded, and commanded him to bring her body and those of “other Saints near her” to her own Church. Then she disappeared, and Paschal, greatly rejoiced, went forth, and straightway returned to the ground over which he had gone so many times in vain. In the cemetery of St. Calixtus he now noticed a nameless tomb, which he had never connected in his mind with that of the Saint, because of its extreme bareness and apparent obscurity. He now realised that this must be what he had been seeking. The slab was at once removed from the wall, disclosing a marble-lined recess, in which a little chest of cypress-wood, just over four feet long, reposed without a trace of age or decay. Very carefully it was lifted down and placed at Paschal’s feet. The opening of it presented some difficulty, but when the cover was removed, a strong fragrance of roses and lilies came welling up from the interior. Then the Pope and his assistants beheld Cecilia, lying like a child asleep, her head turned down, her hands folded, her robe, tinged with blood, outlining the modest grace of her young body. That was whole and sweet as on the day when Urban laid it away hundreds of years before; no decay or corruption had been suffered to approach it. All was as on the day of her death, from the great wounds in her neck to the gold embroidery on her dress, and at her feet were the rolls of linen steeped in her blood. They brought her, with great and reverent rejoicing, back to her own house, now the Lord’s; they brought, too, the bodies of her beloved husband and his brother, and that of Maximus, the brave officer who had been charged with their execution, but who chose to follow them to glory. For greater honour Paschal brought there the body of St. Urban and placed it with that of Cecilia and her comrade martyrs under the High Altar. For Cecilia he prepared a white marble sarcophagus, and in this the little cypress-wood coffin[18] was placed. Paschal would not have her body touched, and left her as she had lain ever since that sad and glorious May morning six hundred years before; but he lined the sides of the coffin with a rich damask silk with fringed edges, and spread over her a great veil of silk also, but diaphanously thin, and this too was delicately fringed. All these details so carefully set down at the time were destined to be of great value, not only as aids to identification in after years, but as testimonies to the immeasurable reverence with which the Church regarded the bodies of the martyrs in the early ages.