The Goths, however, respected the churches; these holy places were an inviolable asylum for all who sought refuge in them. An officer having entered a house which served as a depôt for the church of St. Peter, and finding nobody in it but a woman advanced in age, asked her if she had any gold or silver. “I have a great deal,” she replied; “I will place it before your eyes.” At the same time, she displayed a great number of precious vases. “They belong to St. Peter,” said she; “carry away, if you dare, these sacred riches; I cannot prevent you. I abandon them to you; but you must render an account of them to him who is the master of them.” The barbarian did not dare to lay an impious hand upon this deposit, and sent to ask the king’s orders relative to them. Alaric commanded all the vases to be taken to the basilica of the church of St. Peter; and that that woman, with all the Christians who would join her, should be conducted thither likewise. It was a spectacle as surprising as it was magnificent, to see a long train of soldiers, who, holding in one hand their naked swords, and supporting with the other the precious vases they bore on their heads, marched with a respectful countenance, and as if in triumph, amidst the greatest riot and disorder. The Christian women signalized their courage in a most striking manner on this melancholy day. A widow, respectable from her age and birth, and who had lived in retirement with an only daughter, whom she brought up in a life of piety, was assailed by a troop of soldiers, who, in a threatening manner, demanded her gold. “I have given it to the poor,” replied she. The angry barbarians rewarded her answer with blows. Insensible to pain, she only implored them not to separate her from her companion, whose beauty she feared might expose her to insults more cruel than death itself. Her appeal was so touching, that the Gothic soldiers conducted them both safely to the basilica of St. Paul. A young officer, struck with the beauty of a Roman lady, after having made every effort in vain to induce her to comply with his wishes, drew his sword, and pretending that he would cut off her head, inflicted a slight wound, in the hope that she would be overcome by the fear of death; but this noble woman, so far from being terrified at the sight of her own blood, presenting her neck to her enemy, exclaimed,--“Strike again, and strike better!” The sword fell from the hand of the barbarian; he conducted his captive to the church of St. Peter, and commanded the guards to give her up to nobody but her husband. Thus Rome, 1,163 years after its foundation, lost in a single day that splendour which had dazzled the world. It was not, however, destroyed, and was soon repeopled again; but from that period of humiliation, this queen of cities and of the world became the sport and the prey of the barbarians who sacked it in turn.