Then this monk of many dreams and visions, with his halo of saintship, was fresh from the hermits and cenobites of the Thebaid. The even-song that went up from countless caves and cabins under the clear Egyptian sky still lingered in his ear as he expatiated on the paradise of solitude. Forgetting in his zeal the violent moral struggles he had passed through himself, he appealed to them in impassioned words to immolate every natural affection on the altar of a faith that invited them to a life of prayer and meditation far from the tempting delights of a sinful world. It was under this teaching that the ascetic spirit grew so strong as to call out the indignation of the pagan society of Rome. People of the fourth century were as fond of gossip as are the men and women of to-day, and no more charitable. Malicious tongues were whispering evil things of the gifted and famous monk who exercised so pernicious an influence over the wives and daughters of illustrious Roman citizens, inciting them to fling away their fortunes for a dream and seclude themselves from the world to which they belonged. He had spent three years in an atmosphere that must have been grateful to his restless and stormy spirit. But now he found that he was bringing reproach upon those he most revered and loved, so in the summer of 385, when Pope Damasus died, and his occupation was gone, he bade farewell to his friends, and went back to the East, leaving a letter to Asella in which he bitterly denounces those who had dared to malign him. Of Paula he says that “her songs were psalms, her conversations were of the gospel, her delight was in purity, her life a long fast.” Yet his enemies had presumed to attack his attitude toward the saintly woman whose “mourning and penance had touched his heart with sympathy and veneration.” But his pleadings for a life of penitence and sacrifice had not been in vain. A few months later Paula carried out a plan which had been for some time maturing, and followed him, with her daughter Eustochium and a train of consecrated virgins and attendants. The power of religious enthusiasm was never shown more clearly than in this able and learned matron, who had all the strength of the Roman character together with the mystical exaltation of a Christian sibyl. That she was a woman of ardent emotions is evident from the violence of her grief at the death of her daughter and her husband. But in spite of her family affections she was firm in her purpose to leave home and friends for a life of hardship in the far East. The tears of her youngest daughter, Rufina, who begged her to stay for her wedding day,--which, alas! she never lived to see,--were of no avail. Her little son entreated her in vain. The words of St. Jerome were ringing in her ears. “Though thy father should lie on the threshold, trample over his body with dry eyes, and fly to the standard of the cross,” he had said. “In this matter, to be cruel is the only true filial affection.”