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84 84 ST. MELANIA palm-leaves; she presented him with some silrer plate of the value of 300 Roman pounds. The saint, without look- ing up from his work, said to her, " May God reward you!*' Then he told his steward to take what this lady had given and distribute it to all the brothers in Libya, and in the islands where the monasteries were poor, but not to give any in Egypt where the country was rich. Melania watched him working, and stood waiting for him to give her his blessing or to say something com- plimentary about her gift. At last, as he took no notice of her, she said, " Father, I wish you to know that there are 300 pounds of silver there." Pambo, without so much as looking at the cases which contained the silver, replied, "Daughter, He for whom you brought it has no need to be told the quantity. He can weigh the mountains and forests in His balance. K you made this present to me it might be well to tell me the weight and the value, but if you offer * it to God, Who did not disdain a gift of two mites, be silent." She saw the aged St. Or, the father of a thousand monks, and after spending six months in these interesting and con- genial visits she returned to Alexandria to see Didymus, the blind philosopher who influenced Ruflnus and, through him, eventually tainted her with the doctrines of Origen. From Egypt Melania went to Palestine, and there she had an opportunity of exercising great charity and liberality towards the Catholics, who were suffering cruelly at this time at the hands of the Arians, under the Emperor Yalens. At one time she was obliged to disguise herself as a slave, in order to obtain admission to the prisons of some of the confessors. She was arrested, but on making known her name and rank she was inmiediately liberated, treated with all possible deference, and permitted to visit whomsoever she chose. She built a monastery at Jerusalem, and presided there for twenty-seven years, much as- sisted by Eufinus in all her arrangements. Meanwhile, her son Publicola had grown up and married Albina ((3), an exemplary young Christian lady of one of the noblest Roman fieunilies, and sister of Volusianus, prefect of Rome. They had a son Publicola, and a daughter Melania the Younger. Melania the Elder had been more than thirty-five years absent from Rome when, about 404, she thought herself called upon to return, in order to strengthen the holy purposes entertained by her grand-dau gh ter. A number of ill ustrious persons came to Naples to meet her and escort her home. The Appian way was filled with the gilded carts (carrucse) of great ladies, and with the magnificent carriages and gold-embossed trappings of the horses and mules of nobles, her relations and friends. The carruese used by so many of the rich Romans were sometimes of solid silver or covered with silver or gold. Melania, the object of this gorgeous reception, in her rough coarse gown on a poor horse, headed the procession. Her first visit was to her nephew or cousin, St. Paulinus and his wife Tabasia, at Nola on the way ta Rome. She was the bearer of a priceless gift from the Patriarch of Jerusalem to Paulinus --a piece of the Cross of Christ. After spending a short time with her family she again went to Africa, and while there she heard of the death of Publi- cola. She returned to Rome and found her grandson-in-law and granddaughter so congenial to her tastes that she lived some years with them in Rome, but find- ing the noise and the number of visitors distracting, not long before the Gothic invasion of Rome, she returned to Jeru- salem and died there, aged about sixty. St. Jerome in several letters calls her the holy and devout Melania, but after his quarrel with Rufinns, as she sided with her own friend, he speaks of her as " she whose name of blackness attests the darkness of her perfidy.'' It is often asserted that the elder Melania has never been placed by the Church among the Saints, partly on account of her sympathy with Origen, who although reckoned among the Fathers of the Church, is never styled Saint Melania is called Venerable by Gu^riu. She is highly commended by St. Augustine and St. Paulinus, and her