tree which withers by the decay of its root." Which
prediction St. Gregory observes to have been accomplished.

The death of this great saint seems to have happened soon after that of
his sister St. Scholastica, and in the year after his interview with
Totila. He foretold it his disciples, and caused his grave to be opened
six days before. When this was done he fell ill of a fever, and on the
sixth day would be carried into the chapel, where he received the body
and blood of our {637} Lord,[12] and having given his last instructions
to his sorrowful disciples, standing and leaning on one of them, with
his hands lifted up, he calmly expired, in prayer, on Saturday, the 21st
of March, probably in the year 543, and of his age the sixty-third;
having spent fourteen years at Mount Cassino. The greatest part of his
relics remains still in that abbey; though, some of his bones were
brought into France, about the close of the seventh century, and
deposited in the famous abbey of Fleury, which, on that account, has
long borne the name of St. Bennet's on the Loire.[13] It was founded in
the reign of Clovis II., about the year 640, and belongs at present to
the congregation of St. Maur.

* * * * *

St. Gregory, in two words, expresses the characteristical virtue of this
glorious patriarch of the monastic order, when he says, that, returning
from Vicovara to Sublaco, he dwelt alone with himself;[14] which words
comprise a great and rare perfection, in which consists the essence of
holy retirement. A soul dwells not in true solitude, unless this be
interior as well as exterior, and unless she cultivates no acquaintance
but with God and herself, admitting no other company. Many dwell in
monasteries, or alone, without possessing the secret of living with
themselves. Though they are removed from the conversation of the world,
their minds still rove abroad, wandering from the consideration of God
and themselves, and dissipated amid a thousand exterior objects which
their imagination presents to them, and which they suffer to captivate
their hearts, and miserably entangle their will with vain attachments
and foolish desires. Interior solitude requires the silence of the
interior faculties of the soul, no less than of the tongue and exterior
senses: without this, the enclosure of walls is a very weak fence. In
this interior solitude, the soul collects all her faculties within
herself, employs all her thou