More noted was Fabiola, a member of the great Fabian family, who had been divorced from a vicious husband and made a second marriage which seems to have lain heavily on her tender conscience when she became a widow shortly afterward. Indeed, she went so far in her remorse as to stand in the crowd of penitents at the door of the Lateran on Easter Eve, clad in coarse sackcloth, unveiled, and weeping, with ashes on her head and hair trailing, as she prostrated herself and waited for public absolution. It is said that bishop, priests, and people were alike touched to tears at the humiliation of the young, gay, and beautiful woman, the idol of a patrician society. But her religious enthusiasm was more than a sudden outburst of feeling. This pale devotee gave her large fortune to charity, built the first Christian hospital, gathered from the streets the sick, the maimed, and the suffering, even ministering with her own hands to outcast lepers. Her charities were boundless, and extended to remote islands of the sea. St. Jerome calls her a heroine of Christianity, the admiration of unbelievers. But her intellect was clear and brilliant, and her close questionings spurred him to write of many things which would otherwise have been left in darkness. In her later days she surprised him one evening in the convent at Bethlehem, where she was visiting her friends, by reciting from memory a celebrated letter in praise of a solitary and ascetic life which he had written to Heliodorus many years earlier. It was the letter which had brought so much censure on the austere monk, as it sent great numbers of noble women and many men into the ranks of the hermits and cenobites. This woman of talent and fashion, who left the gay world to become saint, philanthropist, nurse, and pilgrim, died shortly before the terrible days came to Rome, and its temples resounded with psalms in her honor. Young and old sang her praises. The galleries, housetops, and public places could not contain the people who flocked to her funeral. So wicked Rome, in the last days of its fading glory, paid homage to women of great virtues, great deeds, and unselfish lives.