In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi—­of whose waters it is said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common purposes—­is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto.  Here the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers.  In the turbulent thirteenth century, when papal, feudal and democratic parties opposed each other in Rome, and the vigorous sap of half-tamed barbarian life still coursed through the pulses of Italy, Saint Dominic rose like a reformer, a lawgiver and a peace-maker.  On the other side of the Tiber, entrenched behind baronial walls and fiercely protected by baronial champions, was a convent of women whose practice of their vows had become too relaxed for such a bad example to be allowed to remain unreproved.  The ecclesiastical authorities wished peremptorily to disestablish the convent and filter its inmates through some neighboring religious houses more zealous and more edifying in their conduct.  But the nuns, who were mostly of noble families, appealed to their charters, their immunities and exemption from papal jurisdiction.  Their fathers and brothers, the formidable barons who held within the papal city many strongholds well garrisoned, took up their quarrel and dared the world to dispossess the refractory sisterhood.  Saint Dominic had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers.  The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once.  He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess.  He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth,” the merit of obedience, the need of reform, the great work that his order was doing for God, and the call for more laborers in the field:  he proposed to the nuns to be his helpers among their own sex, and his coheiresses in the heavenly reward of the future.  His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of the rebellious but still noble-minded women.  Roused to a new sense of power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became models of austerity.  The better to signify to the world the spiritual change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence, and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic taking his monks to repeople the convent across the Tiber left vacant by the submissive sisterhood.