continue to do so; you will enter Rome; you will cross the sea; you will reign nine years longer, but death will overtake you on the tenth, when you will be arraigned before a just God to give an account of your deeds." Totila trembled at this sentence, besought the prayers of the abbot, and took his leave. The prediction was marvellously fulfilled; in any case the interview wrought a change in the manner of this Gothic warrior little short of miraculous, for from that time he treated those whom he had conquered with gentleness. When he took Rome, as St. Benedict had predicted he should, he forbade all carnage, and insisted on protecting women from insult; stranger still, in the year 552, only a little beyond the time allotted him by the prediction, he fell in a battle which he fought against Narses, the eunuch general of the Greco-Roman army. St. Benedict's sister, Scholastica, who had become a nun, discovered the whereabouts of her lost brother, came to Monte Cassino, took up her residence near him, and founded a convent upon the principles of his rule. She was, therefore, the first Benedictine nun, and is often represented in paintings, prominent in that well-known group composed of herself, St. Benedict, and the two disciples, Maurus and Placidus. [Footnote 32: "Quem cum a longe sedentem cerneret, non ausus accedero sese in terram dedit."--St. Greg. Dial., lib. ii., c. 14.] It appears that her brother was in the habit of paying her a visit every year, and upon one occasion stayed until late in the evening, so late that Scholastica pressed him not to leave; but he persisting, she offered a prayer that heaven might interpose and prevent his going, when suddenly a tempest came on so fierce and furious that he was compelled to remain until it was over, when he returned to his monastery. Two days after this occurrence, as he was praying in his cell, he beheld the soul of his beloved sister ascending to heaven in the form of a dove, and the same day intelligence was brought him of her death. This vision forms the subject of many of the pictures in Benedictine nunneries. One short month after the decease of this affectionate sister, St. {157} Benedict, through visiting and attending to the sick and poor in his neighborhood, contracted a fever which prostrated him; he immediately foretold his death, and ordered the tomb in which his sister lay in the church to be opened. On the sixth day of his illness he asked to be carried to it, where he remained for some time in silent, prayerful contemplation; he then begged to be removed to the steps of the high alter, where, having received the holy viaticum, he suddenly stretched out his arms to heaven and fell back dead. This event took place on Saturday, the 21st March, 543, in the 63d year of his age. He was buried by the side of his sister Scholastica, on the very spot, it is said, where he threw down the altar of Apollo. In the seventh century, however, some of his