Several years before, Melania, a widow of twenty-three, had sailed away to the Thebaid, on a similar mission. She too had passed through great sorrows. With strange calmness and without a tear, she had buried her husband and two sons in quick succession, thanking God that she had no longer any ties to stand between her and her pious duties. And for this hardness St. Jerome had applauded her, holding her up as an example to her sex! She too had turned away dry-eyed and inflexible from the tears of the little son she left to the tender mercies of the pretor. Did Mme. de Chantal recall these women, centuries after, when she walked serenely over the prostrate body of her son, who had thrown himself across the threshold to bar her departure from her home to a life of spiritual consecration and conventual discipline under the direction of St. François de Sales? We cannot follow the wanderings of these fourth-century pilgrims among the hermits of the desert and the holy places of Syria. They were among the first of a long line of women who have given up the luxuries and refinements of life for a hut or a cave in the wilderness, and a bare, hard existence, illuminated only by the “light that never was on sea or land.” Melania established a convent on the Mount of Olives, with Rufinus as the spiritual director, and here it is probable that Paula visited her before settling finally near the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where she built three convents, a hospital, and a monastery, which was superintended by St. Jerome. It was here that the rich descendant of the Scipios, who had gone from a palace to a cell, gave herself to prayer and menial duties, while she scattered her fortune among the poor. IV