To this quiet but palatial retreat on the Aventine--which tradition places not far from the present site of Sta. Sabina--many women fled from the gay world of splendor and fashion. They were mostly rich and high-born; some were widows, who consecrated a broken life to the service of God and their fellow-men; a few were devoted maidens. The oldest of the little group was Asella, a sister of Marcella, who had been drawn from childhood to an ascetic life. She dressed like a pilgrim, lived on bread and water with a little salt, slept on the bare ground, went out only to visit the graves of the martyrs, and held it a jewel in her crown that she never spoke to a man, though she evidently did not object to receiving letters from the good St. Jerome. He speaks of her as “an illustrious lady, a model of perfection,” and says that no one knew better how to combine “austerity of manner with grace of language and serious charm. No one gave more gravity to joy, more sweetness to melancholy. She rarely opened her mouth; her face spoke; her silence was eloquent. A cell was her paradise, fasting her delight. She did not see those to whom she was most tenderly attached, and was full of holy ardor.” But hardships and low diet seem to have agreed with this saintly woman, as she was well, in spite of them, through a long life, in which she won praises from good and bad alike. Lea is a dim figure at this distance, but she was spoken of as “the head of a monastery and mother of virgins,” who died early and was greatly honored for her goodness, her humility, her robe of sackcloth not too well cared for, her days of fasting, and her nights of prayer.