SAINT AUGUSTIN BY LOUIS BERTRAND TRANSLATED BY VINCENT O'SULLIVAN TRANSLATOR'S NOTE The quotations from Saint Augustin's _Confessions_ are taken from CanonBigg's scholarly version, which seems to me the best in English. But thereare places where M. Bertrand's reading of the original text differs fromDr. Bigg's, and in such cases I have felt myself obliged to follow theauthor of this book. These differences never seriously affect the meaningof a passage; sometimes it is a mere matter of choice, as with the word_collactaneum_ (i, 7) which Dr. Bigg translates "twin, " and M. Bertrand, like Pusey, _frère de lait_, or "foster-brother. " As a rule, Dr. Biggchooses the quietest terms, and M. Bertrand the most forcible. Thosecurious in such matters may like to see an instance. The original text runs:-- Avulsa a latere meo tanquam impedimento conjugii, cum quâ cubare solitus eram, cor ubi adhaerebat, concisum et vulneratum mihi erat, et trahebat sanguinem. (_Confessiones_, vi, 15. ) M. Bertrand translates:-- Quand on arracha de mes flancs, sous prétexte qu'elle empêchait mon mariage, celle avec qui j'avais coutume de dormir, depuis si longtemps, là où mon coeur était attaché au sien, il se déchira, et je traînais mon sang avec ma blessure. Canon Bigg's version is:-- My mistress was torn from my side as an obstacle to my marriage, and my heart, which clung to her, was torn and wounded till it bled. In this place, it will be observed that Dr. Bigg does not emphasize theword _ubi_ which, as the reader will find on turning to page 185 of thisvolume, M. Bertrand thinks so significant. The remaining English versions of the writings of Saint Augustin and of theother Latin authors quoted are my own, except the passages from _The Cityof God_, including the verse translation of Persius, which are taken, with some necessary alterations, from the Seventeenth century translationascribed to John Healey. V. O'S. CONTENTS CHAPTER PROLOGUE THE FIRST PART DAYS OF CHILDHOOD I. AN AFRICAN FREE-TOWN SUBJECT TO ROME II. THE FAMILY OF A SAINT III. THE COMFORT OF THE MILK IV. THE FIRST GAMES V. THE SCHOOLBOY OF MADAURA VI. THE HOLIDAYS AT THAGASTE THE SECOND PART THE ENCHANTMENT OF CARTHAGE I. CARTHAGO VENERIS II. THE AFRICAN ROME III. THE CARTHAGE STUDENT IV. THE SWEETNESS OF TEARS V. THE SILENCE OF GOD THE THIRD PART THE RETURN I. THE CITY OF GOLD II. THE FINAL DISILLUSION III. THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN IV. PLANS OF MARRIAGE V. THE CHRIST IN THE GARDEN THE FOURTH PART THE HIDDEN LIFE I. THE LAST SMILE OF THE MUSE II. THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA III. THE MONK OF THAGASTE IV. AUGUSTIN A PRIEST THE FIFTH PART THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY I. THE BISHOP OF HIPPO II. WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE III. THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN IV. AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS" THE SIXTH PART FACE TO FACE WITH THE BARBARIANS I. THE SACK OF ROME II. THE CITY OF GOD III. THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION IV. SAINT AUGUSTIN INDEX SAINT AUGUSTIN PROLOGUE Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. "Our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee. " _Confessions_, I, i. Saint Augustin is now little more than a celebrated name. Outside oflearned or theological circles people no longer read him. Such is truerenown: we admire the saints, as we do great men, on trust. Even his_Confessions_ are generally spoken of only from hearsay. By this neglect, is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during theseventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sourausterity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches tothe remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal--has thataffected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in theranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been anybeings who do not resemble Augustin, and whom probably he would haveattacked with all his eloquence and all the force of his dialectic, theyare the Jansenists. Doubtless he would have said with contempt: "The partyof Jansen, " even as in his own day, with his devotion to Catholic unity, hesaid: "The party of Donatus. " It must be acknowledged also that the very sight of his works isterrifying, whether we take the enormous folios in two columns of theBenedictine edition, or the volumes, almost as compact, and much morenumerous, of recent editions. Behind such a rampart of printed matter he iswell defended against profane curiosity. It needs courage and perseveranceto penetrate into this labyrinth of text, all bristling with theology andexegesis and metaphysics. But only cross the threshold of the repellentenclosure, grow used to the order and shape of the building, and it willnot be long ere you are overcome by a warm sympathy, and then by a steadilyincreasing admiration for the host who dwells there. The hieratic faceof the old bishop lights up, becomes strangely living, almost modern, inexpression. You discover under the text one of the most passionate lives, most busy and richest in instruction, that history has to shew. What itteaches is applicable to ourselves, answers to our interests of yesterdayand to-day. This existence, and the century in which it was passed, recallour own century and ourselves. The return of similar circumstances hasbrought similar situations and characters; it is almost our portrait. Andwe feel half ready to conclude that at the present moment there is nosubject more actual than St. Augustin. At least he is one of the most interesting. What, indeed, is more romanticthan this wandering life of rhetorician and student that the youthfulAugustin led, from Thagaste to Carthage, from Carthage to Milan and toRome--begun in the pleasures and tumult of great cities, and ending in thepenitence, the silence, and recollection of a monastery? And again, whatdrama is more full of colour and more profitable to consider than that lastagony of the Empire, of which Augustin was a spectator, and, with all hisheart faithful to Rome, would have prevented if he could? And then, whattragedy more stirring and painful than the crisis of soul and consciencewhich tore his life? Well may it be said that, regarded as a whole, thelife of Augustin was but a continual spiritual struggle, a battle of thesoul. It is the battle of every moment, the never-ceasing combat of bodyand spirit, which the poets of that time dramatized, and which is thehistory of the Christian of all times. The stake of the battle is a soul. The upshot is the final triumph, the redemption of a soul. What makes the life of Augustin so complete and so truly typical is thathe fought the good fight, not only against himself, but against all theenemies of the Church and the Empire. If he was a doctor and a saint, sowas he too the type of the man of action in one of the most disheartenedperiods. That he triumphed over his passions--this, in truth, concerns onlyGod and himself. That he preached, wrote, shook crowds, disturbed minds, may seem without importance to those who reject his doctrine. But thatacross the centuries his soul, afire with charity, continues to warm ourown; that without our knowledge he still shapes us; and that, in a waymore or less remote, he is still the master of our hearts, and, in certainaspects, of our minds--there is what touches each and all of us, withoutdistinction. Not only has Augustin always his great place in the livingcommunion of all christened people, but the Western soul is marked with thestamp of his soul. First of all, his fate is confused with that of the dying Empire. Hewitnessed, if not the utter disappearance, at least the gradual swooningaway of that admirable thing called the Roman Empire, image of Catholicunity. Well, we are the wreckage of the Empire. Usually, we turn away withcontempt from those wretched centuries which underwent the descents of theBarbarians. For us, that is the Lower-Empire, a time of shameful decadencewhich deserves nothing but our scorn. However, it is out of this chaosand this degradation that we have arisen. The wars of the Roman republicconcern us less than the outlawry of the Barbarian chiefs who separated ourGaul from the Empire, and without knowing it, prepared the dawn of France. After all, what are the rivalries of Marius and Sylla to us? The victory ofAëtius over the Huns in the plains of Chalons concerns us a good deal more. Further, it is unfair to the Lower-Empire to view it only as a time offeebleness and cowardice and corruption. It was also an epoch of immenseactivity, prolific of daring and high-flying adventurers, some of themheroic. Even the most degenerate of the last Emperors never lost theconviction of Roman majesty and grandeur. Unto the very end, they employedall the ruses of their diplomacy to prevent the Barbarian chiefs fromimagining themselves anything else but vassals of the Empire. Honorius, atbay in Ravenna, persisted in refusing Alaric the title of commander of the_Cohortes Urbanæ_, even though his refusal were to lead to the sack of Romeand imperil his own life. Simply by his fidelity to the Empire, Augustin shews himself one likeourselves--a Latin of Occitania. But still closer resemblances draw himnear to us. His time was very like our own time. Upon even a slightfamiliarity with his books we recognize in him a brother-soul who hassuffered, felt, thought, pretty nearly like us. He came into an endingworld, on the eve of the great cataclysm which was going to carry away anentire civilization--a tragic turning-point of history, a time troubled andoften very grievous, which was hard to live in for all, and to even themost determined minds must have appeared desperate. The peace of the Churchwas not yet settled; consciences were divided. People hesitated between thebelief of yesterday and the belief of to-morrow. Augustin was among thosewho had the courage to choose, and who, having once chosen their faith, proclaimed it without weakening. The belief of a thousand years was dyingout, quenched by a young belief to which was promised an eternal duration. How many delicate souls must have suffered from this division, which cutthem off from their traditions and obliged them, as they thought, to befalse to their dead along with the religion of their ancestors! All theirritations which the fanatics of to-day inflict upon believing souls, manymust have had to suffer then. The sceptics were infused by the intoleranceof the others. But the worst (even as it is to-day) was to watch thetorrent of foolishness which, under cover of religion, philosophy, ormiracle-working, pretended to the conquest of mind and will. Amid this massof wildest doctrines and heresies, in this orgy of vapid intellectualism, they had indeed solid heads who were able to resist the generalintoxication. And among all these people talking nonsense, Augustin appearsadmirable with his good sense. This "intellectual, " this mystic, was not only a man of prayer andmeditation. The prudence of the man of action and the administratorbalanced his outbursts of dialectical subtility, often carried too far. Hehad that sense of realities such as we flatter ourselves that we have; hehad a knowledge of life and passion. Compared to the experience of, say, Bossuet, how much wider was Augustin's! And with all that, a quiveringsensitiveness which is again like our own--the sensitiveness of times ofintense culture, wherein the abuse of thought has multiplied the ways ofsuffering in exasperating the desire for pleasure. "The soul of antiquitywas rude and vain. " It was, above all, limited. The soul of Augustin istender and serious, eager for certainties and those enjoyments which donot betray. It is vast and sonorous; let it be stirred ever so little, andfrom it go forth deep vibrations which render the sound of the infinite. Augustin, before his conversion, had the apprehensions of our Romantics, the causeless melancholy and sadness, the immense yearnings for "anywherebut here, " which overwhelmed our fathers. He is really very close to us. He has broadened our Latin souls by reconciling us with the Barbarian. TheLatin, like the Greek, only understood himself. The Barbarian had not theright to express himself in the language of the Empire. The world was splitinto two parts which endeavoured to ignore each other, Augustin has made usconscious of the nameless regions, the vague countries of the soul, whichhitherto had lain shrouded in the darkness of barbarism. By him the unionof the Semitic and the Occidental genius is consummated. He has acted asour interpreter for the Bible. The harsh Hebraic words become soft to ourears by their passage through the cultivated mouth of the rhetorician. Hehas subjugated us with the word of God. He is a Latin who speaks to us ofJehovah. Others, no doubt, had done it before him. But none had found a similaremotion, a note of tenderness so moving. The gentle violence of his charitywins the adherence of hearts. He breathes only charity. After St. John, itis he who is the Apostle of Love. His tireless voice dominated the whole of the West. The Middle Ages stillheard it. For centuries his sermons and treatises were copied over andover again; they were repeated in cathedrals, commented in abstracts oftheology. People came to accept even his theory of the fine arts. All thatwe have inherited from the ancients reaches us through Augustin. He is thegreat teacher. In his hands the doctrinal demonstration of the Catholicreligion takes firm shape. To indicate the three great stages of the onwardmarch of the truth, one may say: Jesus Christ, St. Paul, St. Augustin. Nearest to our weakness is the last. He is truly our spiritual father. Hehas taught us the language of prayer. The words of Augustin's prayers arestill upon the lips of the devout. This universal genius, who during forty years was the speaking-trumpet ofChristendom, was also the man of one special century and country. Augustinof Thagaste is the great African. Well may we be proud of him and adopt him as one of our glories--we whohave kept up, for now almost a century, a struggle like to that whichhe maintained for the unity of the Roman Empire, we who consider Africaas an extension of France. More than any other writer, he has expressedthe temperament and the genius of his country. This motley Africa, withits eternal mixture of races at odds with one another, its jealoussectarianism, the variety of its scenery and climate, the violenceof its sensations and passions, its seriousness of character and itsquick-changing humour, its mind at once practical and frivolous, itsmaterialism and its mysticism, its austerity and its luxury, itsresignation to servitude and its instincts of independence, its hungerto rule--all that comes out with singularly vivid touches in the work ofAugustin. Not only was he his country's voice, but, as far as he could, herealized its old dream of dominion. The supremacy in spiritual matters thatCarthage disputed so long and bitterly with Rome, it ended by obtaining, thanks to Augustin. As long as he lived, the African Church was themistress of the Churches of the West. As for me--if I may venture to refer to myself in such a matter--I have hadthe joy to recognize in him, besides the Saint and Teacher whom I revere, the ideal type of the Latin of Africa. The image of which I descried theoutline long ago through the mirages of the South in following the waggonsof my rugged heroes, I have seen at last become definite, grow clear, waxnoble and increase to the very heaven, in following the traces of Augustin. And even supposing that the life of this child of Thagaste, the son ofMonnica, were not intermingled so deeply with ours, though he were for usonly a foreigner born in a far-off land, nevertheless he would still remainone of the most fascinating and luminous souls who have shone amid ourdarkness and warmed our sadness--one of the most human and most divinecreatures who have trod our highways. THE FIRST PART DAYS OF CHILDHOOD Sed delectabat ludere. "Only, I liked to play. " _Confessions_, I, 9. I AN AFRICAN FREE-TOWN SUBJECT TO ROME Little streets, quite white, which climb up to clay-formed hills deeplyfurrowed by the heavy winter rains; between the double row of houses, brilliant in the morning sun, glimpses of sky of a very tender blue; hereand there, in the strip of deep shade which lies along the thresholds, white figures crouched upon rush-mats--indolent outlines, draped withbright colours, or muffled in rough and sombre wool-stuffs; a horseman whopasses, bent almost in two in his saddle, the big hat of the South flungback over his shoulders, and encouraging with his heel the graceful trot ofhis horse--such is Thagaste as we see it to-day, and such undoubtedly itappeared to the traveller in the days of Augustin. Like the French town built upon its ruins, the African free-city lay in asort of plain taken between three round hills. One of them, the highestone, which is now protected by a _bordj_, must have been defended in olddays by a _castellum_. Full-flowing waters moisten the land. To thosecoming from the stony regions about Constantine and Setif, or the vast bareplain of the Medjerda, Thagaste gives an impression of freshness and cool. It is a laughing place, full of greenery and running water. To the Africansit offers a picture of those northern countries which they have never seen, with its wooded mountains covered by pines and cork trees and ilex. Itpresents itself as a land of mountain and forest--especially forest. It isa hunter's country. Game is plentiful there--boar, hare, redwing, quail, partridge. In Augustin's time, wild beasts were apparently more numerous inthe district than they are to-day. When he compares his adversaries, theDonatists, to roaring lions, he speaks like a man who knows what a lion is. To the east and west, wide stretches of woodland, rounded hill-summits, streams and torrents which pour through the valleys and glens--thereyou have Thagaste and the country round about--the world, in fact, asit revealed itself to the eyes of the child Augustin. But towards thesouth the verdure grows sparse; arid mountain-tops appear, crushed downas blunted cones, or jutted in slim Tables of the Law; the sterilityof the desert becomes perceptible amid the wealth of vegetation. Thisfull-foliaged land has its harsh and stern localities. The African light, however, softens all that. The deep green of the oaks and pines runs intowaves of warm and ever-altering tints which are a caress and a delight forthe eye. A man has it thoroughly brought home to him that he is in a landof the sun. To say the least, it is a country of strongly marked features which affordsthe strangest contrast with the surrounding districts. This wooded Numidia, with its flowing brooks, its fields where the cattle graze, differs in thehighest degree from the Numidia towards Setif--a wide, desolate plain, where the stubble of the wheat-fields, the sandy _steppes_, roll away inmonotonous undulations to the cloudy barrier of Mount Atlas which closesthe horizon. And this rough and melancholy plain in its turn offers astriking contrast with the coast region of Boujeiah and Hippo, which is notunlike the Italian Campania in its mellowness and gaiety. Such clear-cutdifferences between the various parts of the same province doubtlessexplain the essential peculiarities of the Numidian character. The bishopAugustin, who carried his pastoral cross from one end to the other of thiscountry, and was its acting and thinking soul, may perhaps have owed to itthe contrasts and many-sidedness of his own rich nature. Of course, Thagaste did not pretend to be a capital. It was a free-town ofthe second or third order; but its distance from the great centres gave ita certain importance. The neighbouring free-towns, Thubursicum, Thagura, were small. Madaura and Theveste, rather larger, had not perhaps the samecommercial importance. Thagaste was placed at the junction of many Romanroads. There the little Augustin, with other children of his age, wouldhave a chance to admire the out-riders and equipages of the ImperialMail, halted before the inns of the town. What we can be sure of is thatThagaste, then as now, was a town of passage and of traffic, a half-waystopping-place for the southern and coast towns, as well as for those ofthe Proconsulate and Numidia. And like the present Souk-Ahras, Thagastemust have been above all a market. Bread-stuffs and Numidian wines werebartered for the flocks of the Aures, leather, dates, and the espartobasket-work of the regions of Sahara. The marbles of Simitthu, thecitron-wood of which they made precious tables, were doubtless handledthere. The neighbouring forests could furnish building materials to thewhole country. Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, thewarehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in astock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine thingsproduced by the inventive talent of the workers who live in towns. Thus images of plenty and joy surrounded the cradle of Augustin. The smileof Latin beauty welcomed him also from his earliest steps. It is true thatThagaste was not what is called a fine city. The fragments of antiquitywhich have been unearthed there are of rather inferior workmanship. But howlittle is needed to give wings to the imagination of an intelligent child!At all events, Thagaste had a bathing-hall paved with mosaics and perhapsornamented with statues; Augustin used to bathe there with his father. And again, it is probable that, like the neighbouring Thubursicum andother free-cities of the same level, it had its theatre, its forum, itsnymph-fountains, perhaps even its amphitheatre. Of all that nothinghas been found. Certain inscribed stone tablets, capitals and shaftsof columns, a stone with an inscription which belonged to a Catholicchurch--that is all which has been discovered up to this present time. Let us not ask for the impossible. Thagaste had columns--nay, perhaps awhole street between a double range of columns, as at Thimgad. That wouldbe quite enough to delight the eyes of a little wondering boy. A column, even injured, or scarcely cleansed from wrack and rubbish, has about itsomething impressive. It is like a free melody singing among the heavymasses of the building. To this hour, in our Algerian villages, the meresight of a broken column entrances and cheers us--a white ghost of beautystreaming up from the ruins among the modern hovels. There were columns at Thagaste. II THE FAMILY OF A SAINT It was in this pleasant little town, shaded and beautified for many yearsnow by the arts of Rome, that the parents of Augustin lived. His father, Patricius, affords us a good enough type of the RomanizedAfrican. He belonged to the order of _Decuriones_, to the "very brillianturban council of Thagaste" (_splendidissimus ordo Thagastensis_), as aninscription at Souk-Ahras puts it. Although these strong epithets may besaid to be part of the ordinary official phraseology, they indicate, justthe same, the importance which went with such a position. In his township, Patricius was a kind of personage. His son assures us that he was poor, butwe may suspect the holy bishop of exaggerating through Christian humility. Patricius must certainly have owned more than twenty-five acres of land, for this was made a condition of being elected to the _curia_. He hadvineyards and orchards, of which Augustin later on recalled the plentifuland sweet-tasting fruits. In short, he lived in considerable style. Itis true that in Africa household expenses have never at any time been agreat extravagance. Still, the sons of Patricius had a pedagogue, a slavespecially engaged to keep them under his eye, like all the children offamilies comfortably off. It has been said that as Augustin's father was a member of the _curia_, he must have been a ruined man. The Decurions, who levied taxes and madethemselves responsible for their collection, were obliged to supply anydeficiency in the revenue out of their own money. Patricius, it is thought, must have been one of the numerous victims of this disastrous system. Butno doubt there were a good many exceptions. Besides, there is nothing inAugustin's reminiscences which authorizes us to believe that his fatherever knew embarrassment, to say nothing of actual poverty. What seems byfar the most probable is that he lived as well as he could upon the incomeof his estate as a small country landowner. In Africa people are satisfiedwith very little. Save for an unusually bad year following a time of longdrought, or a descent of locusts, the land always gives forth enough tofeed its master. To hunt, to ride horseback, now and then to go on parade, to look afterhis small-holders and agricultural slaves, to drive one of those bargainsin which African cunning triumphs--such were the employments of Patricius. In short, he drifted through life on his little demesne. Sometimes thisindolent man was overcome by a sudden passion for work; or again he wasseized by furious rages. He was violent and brutal. At such moments hestruck out right and left. He would even have hit his wife or flogged theskin off her back if the quietude of this woman, her dignity and Christianmildness, had not overawed him. Let us not judge this kind of conduct byour own; we shall never understand it. The ancient customs, especially theAfrican customs, were a disconcerting mixture of intense refinement andheedless brutality. That is why it will not do to exaggerate the outbursts of Patricius, whichhis son mentions discreetly. Although he may not have been very faithful tohis wife, that was in those days, more than in ours, a venial sin in theeyes of the world. At heart the African has always longed for a harem inhis house; he inclines naturally to the polygamy of Muslemism. In Carthage, and elsewhere, public opinion was full of indulgence for the husband whoallowed himself liberties with the serving-women. People laughed at it, andexcused the man. It is true they were rather harder on the matron who tookthe same kind of liberty with her men-slaves. However, that went on too. The Bishop of Hippo, in his sermons, strongly rebuked the Christian marriedcouples for these frequent adulteries which were scarcely regarded aserrors. Patricius was a pagan, and this partly explains his laxity. It woulddoubtless be going too far to say that he remained faithful to paganismall his life. It is not likely that this urban councillor of Thagaste wasa particularly assured pagan. Speculative and intellectual considerationsmade a very moderate appeal to him. He was not an arguer like his son. Hewas pagan from habit, from that instinctive conservatism of the citizenand landowner who sticks obstinately to his class and family traditions. Prudence and diplomacy had also something to do with it. Many greatlandlords continued to defend and practise paganism, probably from motivessimilar to those of Patricius himself. As for him, he had no desire to getwrong with the important and influential people of the country; he mighthave need of their protection to save his small property from the ravenouspublic treasury. Moreover, the best-paid posts were still controlled by thepagan priesthood. And so Augustin's father thought himself very wise indealing cautiously with a religion which was always so powerful, andrewarded its adherents so well. But for all that, it is undeniable that paganism about this time was in anawkward position from a political point of view. The Government eyed itwith disapproval. Since the death of Constantine, the "accursed emperors"had waged against it a furious war. In 353, just before the birth ofAugustin, Constantius promulgated an edict renewing the order for theclosing of the temples and the abolition of sacrifices--and that too underpain of death and confiscation. But in distant provinces, such as Numidia, the action of the central power was slow and irregular. It was oftenrepresented by officials who were hostile or indifferent to Christianity. The local aristocracy and their following scoffed at it more or lessopenly. In their immense villas, behind the walls of their parks, the richlandowners offered sacrifices and organized processions and feasts asif there were no law at all. Patricius knew all that. And, on the otherside, he could take note of the encroachments of the new religion. Duringthe first half of the fourth century Thagaste had been conquered by theDonatists. Since the edict of Constans against these schismatics, theinhabitants of the little city had come back to Catholicism out of fear ofthe severity of the imperial government. But the settlement was far frombeing complete and final. As a consequence of the edict, the whole regionof the Aures had been in revolution. The Bishop of Bagai, fortified inhis episcopal city and basilica, had stood an actual siege from the Romantroops. Almost everywhere the struggle between Donatists and Catholicsstill went on below the surface. There cannot be the least doubt thatThagaste took its share in these quarrels. To those who urged him to bebaptized, the father of Augustin might well answer with ironic politeness:"I am only waiting till you agree among yourselves, to see where the truthlies. " In his heart this rather lukewarm pagan had no inveterate dislike toChristianity. What proves it at once is that he married a Christian. How did Monnica become the wife of Patricius? How did these two beings, solittle alike, between whom there was such a great difference of age, not tomention all the rest, come to join their fate? Those are questions whichit would never have occurred to the people of Thagaste to ask. Patriciusmarried to be like everybody else--and also because he was well over forty, and his mother an old woman who would soon be no longer able to run hishouse. Monnica also had her mother. The two old women had a meeting, with manypolitenesses and ceremonious bowings, and because the thing appeared tothem reasonable and most suitable, they settled the marriage. Had Patriciusever seen the girl that he was going to take, according to custom, so as tohave a child-bearer and housewife? It is quite likely he had not. Was shepretty, rich, or poor? He considered such matters as secondary, since themarriage was not a love-match but a traditional duty to fulfil. If theunion was respectable, that was quite enough. But however the matter fellout, what is certain is that Monnica was very young. She was twenty-twowhen Augustin was born, and he was probably not her first child. We knowthat she was hardly marriageable when she was handed over, as Arab parentsdo to-day with their adolescent or little girls, to the man who was goingto marry her. Now in Africa girls become marriageable at a very early age. They are married at fourteen, sometimes even at twelve. Perhaps she wasseventeen or eighteen at most when she married Patricius. She must have hadfirst a son, Navigius, whom we shall meet later on at Milan, and also adaughter, of whom we do not even know the name, but who became a nun, andsuperior of a convent in the diocese of Hippo. For us the features of thesetwo other children of Monnica and Patricius are obliterated. They areconcealed by the radiance of their illustrious great brother. Monnica was fond of telling stories of her girlhood to her son. He hashanded down some of them to us. She was brought up strictly, according to the system of that time. Both herparents came of families which had been Christian, and Catholic-Christian, for many generations. They had never been carried away by the Donatistschism; they were people very obstinate in their convictions--a characterquite as frequent in Africa as its opposite, the kind of Numidian or Moor, who is versatile and flighty. It is not unimportant that Augustin came fromthis hard-headed race, for this it was, with the aid of God's grace, thatsaved him--the energetic temper of his will. Still, if the faith of the young Monnica was confirmed from her earliestyears, it is not so much to the lessons of her mother that she owed it, as to the training of an old woman-servant of whom she always spoke withgratitude. In the family of her master, this old woman had a place like theone which to-day in a Turkish family is held by the nurse, the _dada_, whois respected by all the harem and all the household. Doubtless she herselfwas born in the house and had seen all the children born. She had carriedMonnica's father on her back when he was little, just as the Kabylianwomen or the Bedouin nomads carry their babies still. She was a devotedslave, just a bit unreasonable--a veritable housedog who in the zeal ofguardianship barks more than is necessary at the stranger who passes. Shewas like the negress in the Arab houses to-day, who is often a betterMuslem, more hostile to the Christian, than her employers. The old womanin Monnica's family had witnessed the last persecutions; she had perhapsvisited the confessors in prison; perhaps she had seen flow the blood ofthe martyrs. These exciting and terrible scenes would have been graven onher memory. What inflamed stories the old servant must have told her youngmistresses, what vital lessons of constancy and heroism! Monnica listenedto them eagerly. Because of her great faith, this simple slave was revered as a saint byher owners, who entrusted her with the supervision of their daughters. Sheproved a stern governess, who would stand no trifling with her rules. Sheprevented these girls from drinking even water except at meals. Cruelsuffering for little Africans! Thagaste is not far from the country ofthirst. But the old woman said to them: "You drink water now because you can't get at the wine. In time to come, when you are married and have bins and cellars of your own, you'll turn upyour nose at water, and your habit of drinking will be too much for you. " Monnica came near fulfilling the prophecy of the honest woman. It wasbefore she was married. As she was very well-behaved and very temperate, she used to be sent to the cellar to draw the wine from the cask. Beforepouring it into the flagon she would sip just a little. Being unaccustomedto wine, she was not able to drink more; it was too strong for her gullet. She did this, not because she liked the wine, but from naughtiness, to playa trick on her parents who trusted her, and also, of course, because it wasprohibited. Each time she swallowed a little more, and so it went on tillshe ended by finding it rather nice, and came to drinking greedily onecup after another. One day a slave-girl, who went with her to the cellar, began to grumble. Monnica gave her a sharp answer. Upon this the girlcalled Monnica a drunkard. .. . Drunkard! This bitter taunt so humiliated theself-respect of the future saint, that she got the better of her taste fordrink. Augustin does not say it was through piety she did this, but becauseshe felt the ugliness of such a vice. There is a certain roughness in this story of childhood, the roughness ofancient customs, with which is always mingled some decency or dignity. Christianity did the work of polishing the soul of Monnica. At the time weare dealing with, if she was already a very devout young girl, she was faras yet from being the grand Christian that she became afterwards. When she married Patricius she was a girl very reserved and cold to allappearances (in reality, she was very passionate), precise in attending toher religious duties, even a little strict, with her exaggeration of theChristian austerity in her hate of all the brutalities and all the carelessmorals that paganism condoned. Nevertheless, this rigid soul knew how tobend when it was necessary. Monnica had tact, suppleness, and, when itwas needed, a very acute and very reasonable practical sense of which shegave many a proof in the bringing up and management of her son Augustin. This soul, hard for herself, veiled her uncompromising religion under anunchangeable sweetness which was in her rather the work of grace than anatural gift. There can be little doubt that her behaviour and character greatlydisturbed Patricius at the beginning of their married life. Perhaps heregretted the marriage. What use had he for this nun alongside of him!Both of them must have suffered the usual annoyances which always appearedbefore long in unions of this kind between pagan and Christian. True, itwas no longer the time of Tertullian, the heroic century of persecutions, when the Christian women glided into the prisons to kiss the shackles ofthe martyrs. (What a revenge did woman take then for her long and enforcedconfinement to the women's apartments! And how outrageous such conduct musthave seemed to a husband brought up in the Roman way!) But the practicesof the Christian life established a kind of intermittent divorce betweenhusbands and wives of different religion. Monnica often went out, eitheralone, or accompanied by a faithful bondwoman. She had to attend theservices of the Church, to go about the town visiting the poor and givingalms. And there were the fast-days which occurred two or three times aweek, and especially the long fast of Lent--a grievous nuisance when thehusband wanted to give a dinner-party just on those particular days! Onthe vigil of festivals, Monnica would spend a good part of the night inthe Basilica. Regularly, doubtless on Sundays, she betook herself to thecemetery, or to some chapel raised to the memory of a martyr who was oftenburied there--in fact, they called these chapels "Memorials" (_memoriæ_). There were many of these chapels--even too many in the opinion of austereChristians. Monnica went from one to another carrying in a large basketmade of willow branches some pieces of minced meat, bread, and wine mixedwith water. She met her friends in these places. They would sit down aroundthe tombs, of which some were shaped like tables, unpack the provisions, and eat and drink piously in honour of the martyr. This was a residueof pagan superstition among the Christians. These pious _agapæ_, orlove-feasts, often turned into disgusting orgies. When Augustin becameBishop of Hippo he had considerable trouble to get his people out of thehabit of them. Notwithstanding his efforts, the tradition still lasts. Every Friday the Muslem women keep up the custom of visiting the cemeteriesand the marabouts. Just as in the time of St. Monnica, they sit around thetombs, so cool with their casing of painted tiles, in the shade of thecypress and eucalyptus. They gobble sweetmeats, they gossip, they laugh, they enjoy themselves--the husbands are not there. Monnica made these visits in a really pious state of mind, and was farfrom trying to find in them opportunities for lewdness or carouse. She wascontent to drink a little wine very carefully--she always bore in mind heryouthful sin. Besides, this wine weakened with water that she brought fromthe house, was tepid by the time she reached the cemetery; it would be adrink of very moderate relish, little likely to stimulate the senses. Shedistributed what was left of it among the needy, together with the contentsof her basket, and came back modestly to her house. But however staid and reserved she might be, still these outings gave riseto scandalous talk. They annoyed a suspicious husband. All the Africans arethat. Marital jealousy was not invented by Islam. Moreover, in Monnica'stime men and women took part in these funeral love-feasts and mingledtogether disturbingly. Patricius got cross about it, and about a good manyother things too. His old mother chafed his suspicions by carrying tohim the ugly gossip and even the lies of the servants about his wife. Bydint of patience and mildness and attentions, Monnica ended by disarmingher mother-in-law and making it clear that her conduct was perfect. Theold woman flew into a rage with the servants who had lied to her, anddenounced them to her son. Patricius, like a good head of a household, hadthem whipped to teach them not to lie any more. Thanks to this exemplarypunishment, and the good sense of the young wife, peace reigned once morein the family. Women, friends of Monnica, were amazed that the good understanding wasnot oftener upset, at least in an open manner, between husband and wife. Everybody in Thagaste knew the quick-tempered and violent character ofPatricius. And yet there were no signs that he beat his wife. Nor didany one say he did. Other women who had less passionate husbands werenevertheless beaten by them. When they came to Monnica's house they shewedher the marks of the whacks they had got, their faces swollen from blows, and they burst out in abuse of men, clamouring against their lechery, which, said these matrons, was the cause of the ill-treatment they had toendure. "Blame your own tongue, " retorted Monnica. According to her, women should close their eyes to the infidelities oftheir husbands and avoid arguing with them when they were angry. Silence, submissiveness, were the all-powerful arms. And since, as a young woman, she had a certain natural merriment, she added, laughing: "Remember what was read to you on your wedding-day. You were told that youare the handmaids of your husbands. Don't rebel against your masters!. .. " Possibly this was a keen criticism of the pagan code, so hard in its rules. Still, in this matter, the Roman law was in agreement with the Gospel. Sincere Christian as she was, the wife of Patricius never had any quarrelwith him on account of his infidelities. So much kindness and resignationtouched the dissolute and brutal husband, who besides was an excellentman and warm-hearted. The modesty of his wife, after a while, made herattractive in his eyes. He loved her, so to speak, on the strength ofhis respect and admiration for her. He would indeed have been a churl tofind fault with a wife who interfered with him so little and who was aperfect housekeeper, as we shall see later on when we come to her life atCassicium. In one point, where even she did not intend it, she forwardedthe interests of her husband by gaining him the good-will of the Christiansin Thagaste; while he, on his side, could say to the pagans who lookedaskance at his marriage: "Am I not one of yourselves?" In spite of all the differences between him and Monnica, Patricius was acontented husband. III THE COMFORT OF THE MILK Augustin came into this world the thirteenth of November of the year ofChrist 354. It was just one little child more in this sensual and pleasure-lovingAfrica, land of sin and of carnal productiveness, where children areborn and die like the leaves. But the son of Monnica and Patricius waspredestined: he was not to die in the cradle like so many other tinyAfricans. Even if he had not been intended for great things, if he had been only ahead in the crowd, the arrival of this baby ought, all the same, to affectus, for to the Christian, the destiny of the obscurest and humblest ofsouls is a matter of importance. Forty years afterwards, Augustin, in his_Confessions_, pondered this slight ordinary fact of his birth, whichhappened almost unnoticed by the inhabitants of Thagaste, and in truth itseems to him a great event, not because it concerns himself, bishop andFather of the Church, but because it is a soul which at this imperceptiblepoint of time comes into the world. Let us clearly understand Augustin's thought. Souls have been ransomed by aVictim of infinite value. They have themselves an infinite value. Nothingwhich goes on in them can be ignored. Their most trifling sins, theirfeeblest stirrings towards virtue, are vital for the eternity of their lot. All shall be attributed to them by the just Judge. The theft of an applewill weigh perhaps as heavily in the scales as the seizure of a provinceor a kingdom. The evil of sin is in the evil intention. Now the fateof a soul, created by God, on Him depends. Hence everything in a humanlife assumes an extreme seriousness and importance. In the history of acreature, all is worthy of being examined, weighed, studied, and perhapsalso, for the edification of others, told. Here is an altogether new way of regarding life, and, proceeding from that, of understanding art. Even as the slaves, thanks to Christianity, came intothe spiritual city, so the most minute realities by this outlook are to beincluded in literature. The _Confessions_ will be the first model of theart of the new era. A deep and magnificent realism, because it goes evento the very depths of the divine--utterly distinct, at any rate, fromour surface realism of mere amusement--is about to arise from this newconception. Without doubt, in Augustin's eyes, beauty dwells in all things, in so far forth as beauty is a reflection of the order and the thoughtof the Word. But it has also a more essential character--it has a moralsignification and value. Everything, in a word, can be the instrument ofthe loss or the redemption of a soul. The most insignificant of our actionsreverberates to infinitude on our fate. Regarded from this point, boththings and beings commence to live a life more closely leagued together andat the same time more private; more individual and more general. All is inthe lump, and nevertheless all is separate. Our salvation concerns onlyourselves, and yet through charity it becomes involved with the salvationof our fellows. In this spirit let us look at the cradle of Augustin. Let us look at itwith the eyes of Augustin himself, and also, perchance, of Monnica. Bendingover the frail body of the little child he once was, he puts to himselfall the great desperate questions which have shaken humanity for thousandsof years. The mystery of life and death rises before him, formidable. Ittortures him to the point of anguish, of confusion: "Yet suffer me to speakbefore Thy mercy, me who am but dust and ashes. Yea, suffer me to speak, for, behold, I speak not to man who scorns me, but to Thy mercy. Even Thouperhaps dost scorn me, but Thou wilt turn and have pity. For what is itthat I would say, O Lord my God, save that I know not whence I came hitherinto this dying life, shall I call it, or living death?. .. And, lo, myinfancy has long been dead, and I live. But Thou, O Lord, who ever livestand in whom nothing ever dies--tell me, I beseech Thee, O God, and havemercy on my misery, tell me whether another life of mine died before myinfancy began. " One is reminded here of Pascal's famous prosopopoeia: "I know not whohas put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor myself. I am in aterrible ignorance about everything. .. . All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least of all is this very death which I cannot escape. " The phrases of the _Pensées_ are only the echo of the phrases of the_Confessions_. But how different is the tone! Pascal's charge against humanignorance is merciless. The God of Port-Royal has the hard and motionlessface of the ancient Destiny: He withdraws into the clouds, and only shewsHimself at the end to raise up His poor creature. In Augustin the accentis tender, trusting, really like a son, and though he be harassed, one candiscern the thrill of an unconquerable hope. Instead of crushing man underthe iron hand of the Justice-dealer, he makes him feel the kindness of theFather who has got all ready, long before its birth, for the feeble littlechild: "The comforts of Thy pity received me, as I have heard from thefather and mother of my flesh. .. . And so the comfort of woman's milk wasready for me. For my mother and my nurses did not fill their own bosoms, but Thou, O Lord, by their means gavest me the food of infancy, accordingto Thy ordinance. .. . " And see! his heart overflows at this remembrance of his mother's milk. Thegreat doctor humbles his style, makes it simple and familiar, to tell us ofhis first mewlings, and of his baby angers and joys. He too was a father;he knew what is a new-born child, and a young mother who gives it suck, because he had seen that with his own eyes close beside him. All the smallbothers which mingle with the pleasures of fatherhood he had experiencedhimself. In his own son he studied himself. * * * * * This child, born of a Christian mother, and who was to become the greatdefender of the faith, was not christened at his birth. In the earlyChurch, and especially in the African Church, it was not usual to do so. The baptismal day was put as far off as possible, from the conviction thatthe sins committed after the sacrament were much more serious than thosewhich went before. The Africans, very practical folk, clearly foresaw thatthey would sin again even after baptism, but they wanted to sin at a betterrate, and lessen the inflictions of penance. This penance in Augustin'stime was far from being as hard as in the century before. Nevertheless, theremembrance of the old severity always remained, and the habit was taken toput off baptism so as not to discourage sinners overmuch. Monnica, always sedulous to conform with the customs of her country andthe traditions of her Church, fell in with this practice. Perhaps she mayhave had also the opposition of her husband to face, for he being a paganwould not have cared to give too many pledges to the Christians, nor tocompromise himself in the eyes of his fellow-pagans by shewing that hewas so far under the control of Christian zealots as to have his childbaptized out of the ordinary way. There was a middle course, and this wasto inscribe the child among the catechumens. According to the rite of thefirst admission to the lowest order of catechumens, the sign of the crosswas made on Augustin's forehead, and the symbolic salt placed between hislips. And so they did not baptize him. Possibly this affected his wholelife. He lacked the baptismal modesty. Even when he was become a bishop, henever quite cast off the old man that had splashed through all the paganuncleannesses. Some of his words are painfully broad for chaste ears. Theinfluence of African conditions does not altogether account for this. It isonly too plain that the son of Patricius had never known entire virginityof soul. They named him Aurelius Augustinus. Was Aurelius his family name? We cannottell. The Africans always applied very fantastically the rules of Romannomenclature. Anyhow, this name was common enough in Africa. The Bishop ofCarthage, primate of the province and a friend of Augustin, was also calledAurelius. Pious commentators have sought to find in this name an omen ofAugustin's future renown as an orator. They have remarked that the word_aurum_, gold, is contained in Aurelius--a prophetic indication of thegolden mouth of the great preacher of Hippo. Meanwhile, he was a baby like any other baby, who only knew, as he tellsus, how to take his mother's breast. However, he speaks of nurses whosuckled him; no doubt these were servants or slaves of the household. They gave him their milk, like those Algerian women who, to-day, if theirneighbour is called away, take her child and feed it. Besides, with themchildren are weaned much later than with us. You can see mothers sitting attheir doors put down their work and call to a child of two or three playingin the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin rememberthese things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts theymade to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and theservants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of thepopulace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking aboutit, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just as the sons of ourcolonists learn Arab in playing with little boys who wear chechias on theirheads. He is a Christian, a bishop, already a venerated Father, consulted by thewhole Catholic world, and he tells us all that. He tells it in a seriousand contrite way, with a manifest anxiety to attribute to God, as the solecause, all the benefits which embellished his childhood, as well as todeplore his faults and wretchedness, fatal consequence of the originalFall. And still, we can make out clearly that these suave and far-offmemories have a charm for him which he cannot quite guard himself against. The attitude of the author of the _Confessions_ is ambiguous and a littleconstrained. The father who has loved his child, who has joined in hisgames, struggles in him against the theologian who later on was to upholdthe doctrine of Grace against the heretics. He feels that he must shew, notonly that Grace is necessary for salvation and that little children oughtto be baptized, but that they are capable of sinning. Yes, the children sineven at nurse. And Augustin relates this story of a baby that he had seen:"I know, because I have seen, jealousy in a babe. It could not speak, yetit eyed its foster-brother _with pale cheeks and looks of hate_. " Childrenare already men. The egoism and greediness of the grown man may be alreadydescried in the newly born. However, the theologian of Grace was not able to drive from his mindthis verse of the Gospel: _Sinite ad me parvulos venire_--"Suffer littlechildren to come unto Me. " But he interprets this in a very narrow sense, luring it into an argument which furthers his case. For him, the smallheight of children is a symbol of the humility without which no one canenter God's kingdom. The Master, according to him, never intended us totake children as an example. They are but flesh of sin. He only drew fromtheir littleness one of those similitudes which He, with His fondness forsymbols, favoured. Well, let us dare to say it: Augustin goes wrong here. Such is the penaltyof human thought, which in its justest statements always wounds sometruth less clear or mutilates some tender sentiment. Radically, Augustinis right. The child is wicked as man is. We know it. But against therelentlessness of the theologian we place the divine gentleness of Christ:"Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom ofGod. " IV THE FIRST GAMES "I loved to play, " Augustin says, in telling us of those far-off years. Is it surprising if this quick and supple intelligence, who masteredwithout effort, and as if by instinct, the encyclopædic knowledge of hisage, who found himself at his ease amidst the deepest abstractions, did, atthe beginning, take life as a game? The amusements of the little Africans of to-day are not very many, nor veryvarious either. They have no inventive imagination. In this matter theirFrench playfellows have taught them a good deal. If they play marbles, orhopscotch, or rounders, it is in imitation of the _Roumis_. And yet theyare great little players. Games of chance attract them above all. At thesethey spend hour after hour, stretched out flat on their stomachs in someshady corner, and they play with an astonishing intensity of passion. Alltheir attention is absorbed in what they are about; they employ on the gameall the cunning of their wits, precociously developed, and so soon stuckfast in material things. When Augustin recalls the games of his childhood, he only mentions "nuts, "handball, and birds. To capture a bird, that winged, light, and brilliantthing, is what all children long to do in every country on earth. But inAfrica, where there are plenty of birds, big people as well as littlelove them. In the Moorish cafés, in the wretchedest _gourbis_, cages madeof reeds are hung on the walls, all rustling with trills and flutteringof wings. Quail, thrushes, nightingales are imprisoned in them. Thenightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, isthe honoured guest, the privileged dweller in these rustic cages. Withthe rose, he is an essential part of Arab poetry. The woods round aboutThagaste were full of nightingales. Not the least doubt that the childAugustin had felt the little musical throats of these singing-birds throbbetween his hands. His sermons, his heaviest treatises, have a recollectionof them. He draws from them an evidence in favour of the creating Word whohas put beauty and harmony everywhere. In the song of the nightingale hefinds, as it were, an echo of the music of the spheres. If he loved birds, as a poet who knows not that he is a poet, did he loveas well to play at "nuts"? "Nuts, " or thimble-rigging, is only a gracefuland crafty game, too crafty for a dreaming and careless little boy. Itcalls for watchfulness and presence of mind. Grown men play at it as wellas children. A step of a staircase is used as a table by the players, orthe pavement of a courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and adried pea. Then, with rapid baffling movements, hands brown and alert flyfrom one shell to another, shuffle them, mix them up, juggle the driedpea sometimes under this shell, sometimes under that, --and the point isto guess which shell the pea has got under. By means of certain astutemethods, an artful player can make the pea stick to his fingers, or to theinside of the shell, and the opponent loses every time. They cheat with acalm shamelessness. Augustin cheated too--which did not prevent him frombitterly denouncing the cheating of his fellow-players. The truth is, that he would not have quite belonged to his country if hehad not lied and stolen now and then. He lied to his tutor and to hisschoolmasters. He stole at his parents' table, in the kitchen, and in thecellar. But he stole like a man of quality, to make presents and to winover his playfellows: he ruled the other boys by his presents--a noteworthycharacteristic in this future ruler of souls. Morals like these, a littlerough, shape free and bold natures. Those African children were much lesscoddled, much less scolded, than to-day. Monnica had something else to dothan to look after the boys. So for them it was a continual life in theopen air, which makes the body strong and hard. Augustin and his companionsshould be pictured as young wild-cats. This roughness came out strong at games of ball, and generally at allthe games in which there are two sides, conquerors and prisoners, orfights with sticks and stones. Stone-throwing is an incurable habitamong the little Africans. Even now in the towns our police are obligedto take measures against these ferocious children. In Augustin's time, at Cherchell, which is the ancient _Cæsarea Mauretaniæ_, the childishpopulation was split into two hostile camps which stoned each other. Oncertain holidays the fathers and big brothers joined the children; bloodflowed, and there were deaths. The bishop Augustin recalls with severity the "superb victories" he won injousts of this kind. But I find it hard to believe that such a delicatechild (he was sickly almost all his life) could have got much pleasure outof these brutal sports. If he was drawn into them by the example of others, it must have been through the imagination they appealed to him. In thesebattles, wherein sides took the field as Romans against Carthaginians, Greeks against Trojans, he believed himself Scipio or Hannibal, Achillesor Hector. He experienced beforehand, as a rhetorician, the intoxicationof a triumph which playfellows who were stronger and better provided withmuscles gave him a hard fight for. He did not always get the upper hand, except perhaps when he bribed the enemy. But an eager young soul, suchas he was, can hardly be content with half-victories; he wants to excel. Accordingly, he sought his revenge in those games wherein the mind has thechief part. He listened to stories with delight, and in his turn repeatedthem to his little friends, thus trying upon an audience of boys that charmof speech by which later he was to subdue crowds. They also played atacting, at gladiators, at drivers and horses. Some of Augustin's companionswere sons of wealthy citizens who gave splendid entertainments to theirfellow-countrymen. As these dramatic representations, or games of thearena or circus, drew near, the little child-world was overcome by afever of imitation. All the children of Thagaste imitated the actors, the_mirmillones_, or the horsemen in the amphitheatre, just as the youngSpaniards of to-day imitate the _toreros_. In the midst of these amusements Augustin fell ill; he had fever andviolent pains in the stomach. They thought he was going to die. It appearsthat it was himself who in this extreme situation asked for baptism. Monnica was making all haste to have the sacrament administered, whensuddenly, against all expectation, the child recovered. Again was baptismpostponed, and from the same reason: to lessen the gravity of the sinswhich young Augustin was bound to commit. His mother, who no doubt foresawsome of them, again fell in with the custom. It is possible that Patricius interfered this time in a more decided way. Just at this period Catholicism was in an unfavourable situation. Theshort reign of Julian had started a violent pagan reaction. Everywherethe temples were reopening, the sacrifices beginning again. Moreover, the Donatists secretly aided the pagans. Their _Seids_, more or lessacknowledged, the Circoncelliones, bands of fanatical peasants, scouredthrough the Numidian country, attacking the Catholics, ravaging andpillaging, and burning their farms and villas. Was this a good time tomake a noisy profession of faith, to be enrolled among the ranks of theconquered party? Little Augustin knew nothing of all these calculations of motherly prudenceand fatherly diplomacy: he begged for baptism, so he tells us. This seemsvery remarkable in so young a child. But he lived in a house where all theservice was done by Christians. He heard the talk of Monnica's friends;perhaps, too, of his grandparents, who were Catholics faithful and austere. And then, his soul was naturally religious. That explains everything:he asked for baptism to be like grown-up people, and because he waspredestined. Among children, the chosen have these sudden flashes of light. At certain moments they feel what one day they shall be. Anyhow, Monnicamust have seen this sign with joy. He got well, and took up again his little boy's life, divided between play, and dawdling, and school. School! painful memory for Augustin! They sent him to the _primusmagister_, the elementary teacher, a real terror, armed with a long switchwhich came down without pity on idle boys. Seated on benches around him, orcrouched on mats, the boys sang out all together: "One and one are two, twoand two are four"--horrible refrain which deafened the whole neighbourhood. The school was often a mere shed, or a _pergola_ in the fields which wasprotected fairly well from sun and rain by cloths stretched overhead--a hutrented for a trifle, wide open to the winds, with a mosquito-net stretchedout before the entrance. All who were there must have frozen in winterand broiled in summer. Augustin remembered it as a slaves' chain-prison(_ergastulum_) of boyhood. He hated school and what they taught there--the alphabet, counting, andthe rudiments of Latin and Greek grammar. He had a perfect horror oflessons--of Greek above all. This schoolboy, who became, when his turncame, a master, objected to the methods of school. His mind, which graspedthings instinctively at a single bound, could not stand the gradualprocedure of the teaching faculty. He either mastered difficulties atonce, or gave them up. Augustin was one of the numerous victims of theeverlasting mistake of schoolmasters, who do not know how to arrangetheir lessons to accord with various kinds of mind. Like most of thosewho eventually become great men, he was no good as a pupil. He was oftenpunished, thrashed--and cruelly thrashed. The master's scourge filledhim with an unspeakable terror. When he was smarting all over from cutsand came to complain to his parents, they laughed at him or made fun ofhim--yes, even the pious Monnica. Then the poor lad, not knowing whom toturn to, remembered hearing his mother and the servants talk of a Being, very powerful and very good, who defends the orphan and the oppressed. Andhe said from the depths of his heart: "O my God, please grant that I am not whipped at school. " But God did not hear his prayer because he was not a good boy. Augustin wasin despair. It is evident that these punishments were cruel, because forty yearsafterwards he denounces them with horror. In his mind, they are torturescomparable to the wooden horse or the iron pincers. Nothing is smallfor children, especially for a sensitive child like Augustin. Theirsensitiveness and their imagination exaggerate all things out of duemeasure. In this matter, also, schoolmasters often go wrong. They do notknow how to handle delicate organizations. They strike fiercely, when afew words said at the right moment would have much more effect on theculprit. .. . Monnica's son suffered as much from the rod as he took pridein his successes at games. If, as Scipio, he was filled with a sensationof glory in his battles against other boys, no doubt he pictured himselfa martyr, a St. Laurence or St. Sebastian, when he was swished. He neverpardoned--save as a Christian--his schoolmasters for having brutalized him. Nevertheless, despite his hatred for ill-ordered lessons, his precociousintelligence was remarked by everybody. It was clear that such lucky giftsshould not be neglected. Monnica, no doubt, was the first to get this intoher head, and she advised Patricius to make Augustin read for a learnedprofession. The business of the _curia_ was not exactly brilliant, and so he may haveperceived that his son might raise their fortunes if he had definiteemployment. Augustin, a professor of eloquence or a celebrated pleader, might be the saviour and the benefactor of his family. The town councils, and even the Imperial treasury, paid large salaries to rhetoricians. Inthose days, rhetoric led to everything. Some of the professors who wentfrom town to town giving lectures made considerable fortunes. At Thagastethey pointed with admiration to the example of the rhetorician Victorinus, an African, a fellow-countryman, who had made a big reputation over-seas, and had his statue in the Roman Forum. And many years before, had not M. Cornelius Fronto, of Cirta, another African, become the tutor of MarcusAurelius, who covered him with honours and wealth and finally raised him tothe Consulship? Pertinax himself, did he not begin as a simple teacher ofgrammar, and become Proconsul of Africa and then Emperor of Rome? How manystimulants for provincial ambition!. .. Augustin's parents reasoned as the middle-class parents of to-day. Theydiscounted the future, and however hard up they were, they resolved tomake sacrifices for his education. And as the schools of Thagaste wereinadequate, it was decided to send this very promising boy to Madaura. V THE SCHOOLBOY OF MADAURA A new world opened before Augustin. It was perhaps the first time he hadever gone away from Thagaste. Of course, Madaura is not very far off; there are about thirty miles atmost between the two towns. But there are no short journeys for children. This one lay along the military road which ran from Hippo to Theveste--agreat Roman causeway paved with large flags on the outskirts of towns, andcarefully pebbled over all the rest of the distance. Erect upon the highsaddle of his horse, Augustin, who was to become a tireless travellerand move about ceaselessly over African roads during all his episcopallife--Augustin got his first glimpse of the poetry of the open road, apoetry which we have lost for ever. How amusing they were, the African roads of those days, how full of sights!Pauses were made at inns with walls thick as the ramparts of citadels, their interiors bordered by stables built in arcades, heaped up withtravellers' packs and harness. In the centre were the trough and cistern;and to the little rooms opening in a circle on to the balcony, drifted upa smell of oil and fodder, and the noise of men and of beasts of burthen, and of the camels as they entered majestically, curving their long necksunder the lintel of the door. Then there was talk with the merchants, justarrived from the south, who brought news of the nomad countries, and hadstories to tell. And then, without hurrying, a start was made again for thenext stage. Long files of chariots were encountered carrying provisions tosoldiers garrisoned on the frontier, or the State-distributed corn of theRoman people to the sea-ports; or again, from time to time, the _lectica_, brought along by slaves or mules, of a bishop on a visitation; and then thelitter, with close-drawn curtains, of a matron or some great personage. Ofa sudden all pulled sharp to one side; the vehicles lined up on the edge ofthe road; and there passed at full speed, in a cloud of dust, a messengerof the Imperial Post. .. . Certainly this road from Hippo to Theveste was one of the busiest and mostpicturesque in the province: it was one of its main arteries. At first the look of the country is rather like the neighbourhood ofThagaste. The wooded and mountainous landscape still spreads out itslittle breast-shaped hills and its sheets of verdure. Here and there theroad skirts the deeply-ravined valley of the Medjerda. At the foot of theprecipitous slopes, the river can be heard brawling in a torrent over itsstony bed, and there are sharp descents among thickets of juniper and thefringed roots of the dwarf-pines. Then, as the descent continues, the landbecomes thinner and spaces bare of vegetation appear oftener. At last, upona piece of tableland, Madaura comes into view, all white in the midst ofthe vast tawny plain, where to-day nothing is to be seen but a mausoleumin ruins, the remains of a Byzantine fortress, and vague traces vanishingaway. This is the first rise of the great plain which declines towards Thevesteand the group of the Aures Mountains. Coming from the woodland country ofThagaste, the nakedness of it is startling. Here and there, thin cows cropstarveling shrubs which have grown on the bank of some _oued_ run dry. Little asses, turned loose, save themselves at a gallop towards the tentsof the nomads, spread out, black and hairy, like immense bats on thewhiteness of the land. Nearer, a woman's red _haick_ interposes, the singlestain of bright colour breaking the indefinite brown and grey of the plain. Here is felt the harshness of Numidia; it is almost the stark spaces ofthe desert world. But on the side towards the east, the architecture ofmountains, wildly sculptured, stands against the level reaches of thehorizon. Upon the clear background of the sky, shew, distinctly, lateralspurs and a cone like to the mystic representation of Tanit. Towards thesouth, crumbling isolated crags appear, scattered about like giganticpedestals uncrowned of their statues, or like the pipes of an organ raisedthere to capture and attune the cry of the great winds of the _steppe_. This country is characterized by a different kind of energy from Thagaste. There is more air and light and space. If the plantation is sparse, thebeautiful shape of the land may be observed all the better. Nothing breaksor lessens the grand effects of the light. .. . And let no one say thatAugustin's eyes cared not for all that, he who wrote after his conversion, and in all the austerity of his repentance: "If sentient things had not asoul, we should not love them so much. " It is here, between Madaura and Thagaste, during the eager years of youth, that he gathered together the seeds of sensations and images which, later on, were to burst forth into fiery and boiling metaphors in the_Confessions_, and in his homilies and paraphrases of Holy Scripture. Lateron, he will not have the time to observe, or he will have lost the power. Rhetoric will stretch its commonplace veil between him and the unceasingspringtide of the earth. Ambition will turn him away from those sightswhich reveal themselves only to hearts unselfish and indifferent. Then, later on, Faith will seize hold of him to the exclusion of all else. Hewill no longer perceive the creation save at odd moments in a kind ofmetaphysical dream, and, so to speak, across the glory of the Creator. But in these youthful years all things burst upon him with extraordinaryviolence and ecstasy. His undulled senses swallowed greedily the wholebanquet offered by this wide world to his hunger for pleasure. The fugitivebeauty of things and beings, with all their charms, revealed itself tohim in its newness: _novissimarum rerum fugaces pulchritudines, earumquesuavitates_. This craving for sensation will still exist in the greatChristian teacher, and betray itself in the warm and coloured figuresof his style. Of course, he was not as a worldly describer, who studiesto produce phrases which present an image, or arranges glitteringpictures--all such endeavours he knew nothing about. But by instinct, andthanks to his warm African temperament, he was a kind of impressionist andmetaphysical poet. If the rural landscape of Thagaste is reflected in certain passages--thepleasantest and most well known--of the _Confessions_, all the intellectualpart of Augustin's work finds its symbolical commentary here in this aridand light-splashed plain of Madaura. Like it, the thought of Augustin hasno shadows. Like it too, it is lightened by strange and splendid tintswhich seem to come from far off, from a focal fire invisible to human eyes. No modern writer has better praised the light--not only the immortal lightof the blessed, but that light which rests on the African fields, andis on land and sea; and nobody has spoken of it with more amplitude andwonder. The truth is, that in no country in the world, not even in Egypt, in the rose-coloured lands of Karnak and Luxor, is the light more pure andadmirable than in these great bare plains of Numidia and the region of theSahara. Is there not enchantment for the eyes of the metaphysician in thisplay of light, these nameless interfulgent colours which appear flimsy asthe play of thought? For the glowing floating haze is made of nothing--oflines, of gleam, of unregulated splendour. And all this triumph offluctuating light and elusive colour is quenched with the sun, smouldersinto darkness, even as ideas in the obscure depths of the intelligencewhich reposes. .. . Not less than this land, stern even to sadness, but hot and sumptuous, thetown of Madaura must have impressed Augustin. It was an old Numidian city, proud of its antiquity. Long before the Romanconquest, it had been a fortress of King Syphax. Afterwards, the conquerorssettled there, and in the second century of our era, Apuleius, the mostfamous of its children, could state before a proconsul, not without pride, that Madaura was a very prosperous colony. It is probable that this oldtown was not so much Romanized as its neighbours, Thimgad and Lambesa, which were of recent foundation and had been built all at once by decree ofthe Government. But it may well have been as Roman as Theveste, a no lessancient city, where the population was probably just as mixed. Madaura, like Theveste, had its temples with pillars and Corinthian porticoes, itstriumphal arches (these were run up everywhere), its forum surrounded by acovered gallery and peopled with statues. Statues also were very liberallydistributed in those days. We know of at least three at Madaura whichAugustin mentions in one of his letters: A god Mars in his heroicnakedness, and another Mars armed from head to foot; opposite, the statueof a man, in realistic style, stretching out three fingers to neutralizethe evil eye. These familiar figures remained very clear in therecollection of Augustin. In the evening, or at the hour of the siesta, hehad stretched himself under their pedestals and played at dice or bones inthe cool shade of the god Mars, or of the Man with outstretched fingers. The slabs of marble of the portico made a good place to play or sleep. Among these statues, there was one perhaps which interested the lad andstimulated all his early ambitions--that of Apuleius, the great man ofMadaura, the orator, philosopher, sorcerer, who was spoken of from one endto the other of Africa. By dint of gazing at this, and listening to thepraises of the great local author, did the young scholar become aware ofhis vocation? Did he have from this time a confused sort of wish to becomeone day another Apuleius, a Christian Apuleius--to surpass the reputationof this celebrated pagan? These impressions and admirations of youth havealways a more or less direct influence upon what use a boy makes of histalents. Be that as it will, Augustin could not take a step in Madaura withoutrunning against the legend of Apuleius, who was become almost a divinityfor his fellow-countrymen. He was looked upon not only as a sage, but asa most wily nigromancer. The pagans compared him to Christ--nay, put himhigher than Christ. In their view he had worked much more astonishingmiracles than those of Jesus or of Apollonius of Tyana. And people told theextravagant stories out of his _Metamorphoses_ as real, as having actuallyhappened. Nothing was seen on all sides but wizards, men changed intoanimals, animals, or men and women, under some spell. In the inns, a manwatched with a suspicious look the ways of the maidservant who poured outhis drink or handed him a dish. Perhaps some magic potion was mingled withthe cheese or bread that she was laying on the table. It was an atmosphereof feverish and delirious credulity. The pagan madness got the better ofthe Christians themselves. Augustin, who had lived in this atmosphere, willlater find considerable trouble in maintaining his strong common sense amidsuch an overflow of marvels. For the moment, the fantasy of tales filled him with at least as muchenthusiasm as the supernatural. At Madaura he lived in a miraculous world, where everything charmed his senses and his mind, and everything stimulatedhis precocious instinct for Beauty. More than Thagaste, no doubt, Madaura bore the marks of the buildinggenius of the Romans. Even to-day their descendants, the Italians, are themasons of the world, after having been the architects. The Romans were thebuilding nation above all others. They it was who raised and establishedtowns upon the same model and according to the same ideal as an orationor a poem. They really invented the house, _mansio_, not only the shelterwhere one lives, but the building which itself lives, which triumphs overyears and centuries, a huge construction ornamental and sightly, existingas much--and perhaps more--for the delight of the eyes as for usefulness. The house, the _Town-with-deep-streets_, perfectly ordered, were a greatmatter of amazement for the African nomad--he who passes and never settlesdown anywhere. He hated them, doubtless, as the haunts of the soldier andthe publican, his oppressors, but he also regarded them with admirationmixed with jealousy as the true expression of a race which, when it entereda country, planted itself for eternity, and claimed to join magnificenceand beauty to the manifestation of its strength. The Roman ruins whichare scattered over modern Algeria humiliate ourselves by their pomp--uswho flatter ourselves that we are resuming the work of the Empire andcontinuing its tradition. They are a permanent reproach to our mediocrity, a continual incitement to grandeur and beauty. Of course, the Romanarchitecture could not have had on Augustin, this still unformed youngAfrican, the same effect as it has to-day on a Frenchman or a man fromNorthern Europe. But it is certain that it formed, without his knowledge, his thought and his power of sensation, and extended for him the lessons ofthe Latin rhetoricians and grammarians. All that was not exactly very Christian. But from these early school yearsAugustin got further and further away from Christianity, and the exampleshe had under his eyes, at Madaura were hardly likely to strengthen himin his faith. It was hardly an edifying atmosphere there for a Catholicyouth who had a lively imagination, a pleasure-loving temperament, and wholiked pagan literature. The greatest part of the population were pagans, especially among the aristocrats. The Decurions continued to preside atfestivals in honour of the old idols. These festivals were frequent. The least excuse was taken to engarlandpiously the doors of houses with branches, to bleed the sacrificial pig, or slaughter the lamb. In the evening, squares and street corners wereilluminated. Little candles burned on all the thresholds. During themysteries of Bacchus, the town councillors themselves headed the popularrejoicings. It was an African carnival, brutal and full of colour. Peoplegot tipsy, pretended they were mad. For the sport of the thing, theyassaulted the passers and robbed them. The dull blows on tambourines, thehysterical and nasal preludes of the flutes, excited an immense elation, atonce sensual and mystic. And all quieted down among the cups and leatherflagons of wine, the grease and meats of banquets in the open air. Even ina country as sober as Africa, the pagan feasts were never much else thanexcuses for gorging and orgies. Augustin, who after his conversion had onlysarcasms for the carnival of Madaura, doubtless went with the crowd, likemany other Christians. Rich and influential people gave the example. Therewas danger of annoying them by making a group apart. And then, there was noresisting the agreeableness of such festivals. Perhaps he was even brought to these love-feasts by those in whose chargehe was. For, in fact, to whom had he been entrusted? Doubtless to somehost of Patricius, a pagan like himself. Or did he lodge with his master, a grammarian, who kept a boarding-house for the boys? Almost all theseschoolmasters were pagan too. Is it wonderful that the Christian lessonsof Monnica and the nurses at Thagaste became more and more blurred inAugustin's mind? Many years after, an old Madaura grammarian, calledMaximus, wrote to him in a tone of loving reproach: "Thou hast drawn awayfrom us"--_a secta nostra deviasti_. Did he wish to hint that at this timeAugustin had glided into paganism? Nothing is more unlikely. He himselfassures us that the name of Christ remained always "graven on his heart. "But while he was at Madaura he lived indifferently with pagans andChristians. Besides that, the teaching he got was altogether pagan in tone. No doubt hepicked out, as he always did, the subjects which suited him. Minds such ashis fling themselves upon that which is likely to nourish them: they throwaside all the rest, or suffer it very unwillingly. Thus Augustin neverwavered in his dislike for Greek: he was a poor Greek scholar. He detestedthe Greeks by instinct. According to Western prejudice, these men ofthe East were all rascals or amusers. Augustin, as a practical African, always regarded the Greeks as vain, discoursing wits. In a word, theywere not sincere people whom it would be safe to trust. The entirelylocal patriotism of the classical Greek authors further annoyed this Romancitizen who was used to regard the world as his country: he thought themvery narrow-minded to take so much interest in the history of some littletown. As for him, he looked higher and farther. It must be remembered thatin the second half of the fourth century the Greek attitude, broadened andfully conscious of itself, set itself more and more against Latinism, aboveall, politically. There it lay, a hostile and impenetrable block before theWestern peoples. And here was a stronger reason for a Romanized African todislike the Greeks. So he painfully construed the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, very cross at thedifficulties of a foreign language which prevented him from grasping theplots of the fine, fabulous narratives. There were, however, abridgmentsused in the schools, a kind of summaries of the Trojan War, written byLatin grammarians under the odd pseudonyms of Dares the Phrygian and Dictysof Crete. But these abridgments were very dry for an imagination likeAugustin's. He much preferred the _Æneid_, the poem admired above allby the Africans, on account of the episode devoted to the foundation ofCarthage. Virgil was his passion. He read and re-read him continually;he knew him by heart. To the end of his life, in his severest writings, he quoted verses or whole passages out of his much-loved poet. Dido'sadventure moved him to tears. They had to pluck the book out of his hands. Now the reason is that there was a secret harmony between Virgil's soul andthe soul of Augustin. Both were gracious and serious. One, the great poet, and one, the humble schoolboy, they both had pity on the Queen of Carthage, they would have liked to save her, or at any rate to mitigate her sadness, to alter a little the callousness of Æneas and the harshness of the Fates. But think of it! Love is a divine sickness, a chastisement sent by thegods. It is just, when all's said, that the guilty one should endure heragony to the very end. And then, such very great things are going to ariseout of this poor love! Upon it depends the lot of two Empires. What countsa woman before Rome and Carthage? Besides, she was bound to perish: thegods had decreed it. .. . There was in all that a concentrated emotion, adepth of sentiment, a religious appeal which stirred Augustin's heart, still unaware of itself. This obedience of the Virgilian hero to theheavenly will, was already an adumbration of the humility of the futureChristian. Certainly, Augustin did not perceive very plainly in these turbid yearsof his youth the full religious significance of Virgil's poem. Carriedaway by his headstrong nature, he yielded to the heart-rending charm ofthe romantic story: he lived it, literally, with the heroine. When hisschoolmasters desired him to elaborate the lament of the dying Queen Didoin Latin prose, what he wrote had a veritable quiver of anguish. Withoutthe least defence against lust and the delusions of the heart, he spentintellectually and in a single outburst all the strength of passion. He absorbed every love-poem with the eagerness of a participating soul. Ifhe took pleasure in the licentiousness of Plautus and Terence, if he readdelightfully those comedies wherein the worst weaknesses are excused andglorified, I believe that he took still more pleasure in the Latin Elegiacswho present without any shame the romantic madness of Alexandrine love. For what sing these poets even to weariness, unless it be that no one canresist the Cyprian goddess, that life has no other end but love? Love foritself, to love for the sake of loving--there is the constant subject ofthese sensualists, of Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid. After the storyof Dido, the youthful reader was ravished by the story of Ariadne, evenmore disturbing, because no remorse modifies the frenzy of it. He read: _Now while the careless hero flees, beating the wave with his and casting to the gales of the open sea his idle promises, --there, standing among the shingle of the beach, the daughter of Minos follows him, alas! with her beautiful sad eyes: she stares, astonied, like to a Bacchante changed into a statue. She looks forth, and her heart floats upon the great waves of her grief. She lets slip from her head her fine-spun coif, she tears away the thin veils which cover her bosom, and the smooth cincture which supports her quivering breasts. All that slips from her body into the salt foam which ripples round her feet. But little she cares for her coif or for her apparel carried away by the tide! Lost, bewildered, with all her heart and all her soul, she is clinging to thee, O Theseus. _ And if Augustin, when he had read these burning verses of Catullus, lookedthrough the Anthologies which were popular in the African schools, hewould come upon "The Vigil of Venus, " that eclogue which ends with such apassionate cry: _O my springtime, when wilt thou come? When shall I be as the swallow? When shall I cease to be silent?. .. May he love to-morrow, he has not loved yet. And he who has already loved, may he love again to-morrow. _ Imagine the effect of such exhortations on a youth of fifteen! Truly, thisspringtide of love, which the poet cries for in his distress, the sonof Monnica knew well was come for him. How he must have listened to themusical and melancholy counsellor who told his pain to the leaves of thebook! What stimulant and what food for his boyish longings and dreams! Andwhat a divine chorus of beauties the great love-heroines of ancient epicand elegy, Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phædra, formed and re-formed continuallyin his dazzled memory! When we of to-day read such verses at Augustin'sage, some bitterness is mixed with our delight. These heroes and heroinesare too far from us. These almost chimerical beings withdraw from us intooutlying lands, to a vanished world which will never come again. But forAugustin, this was the world he was born into--it was his pagan Africawhere pleasure was the whole of life, and one lived only for the lusts ofthe flesh. And the race of fabulous princesses--they were not dead, thoseladies: they were ever waiting for the well-beloved in the palaces atCarthage. Yes, the scholar of Madaura lived wonderful hours, dreaming thusof love between the pages of the poets. These young dreams before lovecomes are more bewitching than love itself: a whole unknown world suddenlydiscovered and entered with a quivering joy of discovery at each step. Theunused strength of illusion appears inexhaustible, space becomes deeper andthe heart more strong. .. . A long time afterwards, when, recovered from all that, Augustin speaks tous of the Divine love, he will know fully the infinite value of it fromhaving gone through all the painful entrancements of the other. And he willsay to us, with the sureness of experience: "The pleasure of the humanheart in the light of truth and the abundance of wisdom--yea, the pleasureof the human heart, of the faithful heart, and of the heart which isholy, stands alone. You will find nothing in any voluptuousness fit to becompared to it. I say not that this other pleasure is less, for that whichis called less hath only to increase to become equal. No, I shall not saythat all other pleasure is less. No comparison can be made. It is anotherkind, it is another reality. " VI THE HOLIDAYS AT THAGASTE In the city of Apuleius, the Christian Monnica's son became simply a pagan. He was near his sixteenth year: the awkward time of early virility wasbeginning for him. Prepared at Madaura, it suddenly burst out at Thagaste. Augustin came back to his parents, no doubt during the vacation. Butthis vacation lasted perhaps a whole year. He had come to the end of hisjuvenile studies. The grammarians at Madaura could teach him nothing more. To round off his acquirements, it would be necessary to attend the lecturesof some well-known rhetorician. Now there were very good rhetoricians onlyat Carthage. Besides, it was a fashion, and point of honour, for Numidianfamilies to send their sons to finish their education in the provincialcapital. Patricius was most eager to do this for his son, who at Madaurahad shewn himself a very brilliant pupil and ought not therefore to bepulled up half-way down the course. But the life of a student cost a gooddeal, and Patricius had no money. His affairs were always muddled. He wasobliged to wait for the rents from his farms, to grind down his tenants, and, ultimately, despairing of any other way out of it, to ask for anadvance of money from a rich patron. That needed time and diplomacy. Days and months went by, and Augustin, with nothing to do, joined in witheasily-made friends and gave himself up to the pleasures of his time oflife, like all the young townsmen of Thagaste--pleasures rather rough andlittle various, such as were to be got in a little free-town of those days, and as they have remained for the natives of to-day, whether they livea town or country life. To hunt, to ride horseback, to play at games ofchance, to drink, eat, and make love--they wanted nothing beyond that. WhenAugustin in his _Confessions_ accuses himself of his youthful escapades heuses the most scathing language. He speaks of them with horror and disgust. Once more we are tempted to believe that he exaggerates through an excessof Christian remorse. There are even some who, put on their guard by thisvehement tone, have questioned the historical value of the _Confessions_. They argue that when the Bishop of Hippo wrote these things his views andfeelings had altered. He could no longer judge with the same eye and inthe same spirit the happenings of his youth. All this is only too certain:when he wrote, it was as a Christian he judged himself, and not as a coldhistorian who refuses to go beyond the brutal fact. He tried to unravelthe origin and to trace the consequences of the humblest of his actions, because this is of the highest importance for salvation. But however severehis judgment may be, it does not impair the reality of the fact itself. Moreover, in natures like his, acts which others would hardly think ofhave a vibration out of all proportion with the act itself. The evil of sindepends upon the consciousness of the sin and the pleasure taken in it. Augustin was very intelligent and very sensual. In any case, young Africans develop early, and the lechery of the raceis proverbial. It must have been a good deal stronger at a time whenChristianity still had to fight against pagan slackness in these matters, ere Islam had imposed its hypocritical austerity upon the general conduct. There is even room for wonder that in Augustin's case this crisis ofdevelopment did not happen earlier than his sixteenth year. It seems thatit was only more violent. In what language he describes it! "I dared toroam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves beneath the shade. " But hewas not yet in love--this he points out himself. In his case then it wassimple lust. "From the quagmire of concupiscence, from the well of puberty, exhaled a mist which clouded and befogged my heart, so that I could notdistinguish between the clear shining of affection and the darkness oflust. .. . I could not keep within the kingdom of light, where friendshipbinds soul to soul. .. . And so I polluted the brook of friendship with thesewage of lust. " Let us not try to make it clearer than he has left ithimself. When one thinks of all the African vices, one dare not dwell uponsuch avowals. "Lord, " he says, "I was loathsome in Thy sight. " And withpitiless justice he analyses the effect of the evil: "It stormed confusedlywithin me, whirling my thoughtless youth over the precipices of desire. AndI wandered still further from Thee, and Thou didst leave me to myself; thetorrent of my fornications tossed and swelled and boiled and ran over. " Andduring this time: "Thou saidst nothing, O my God!" This silence of God isthe terrible sign of hardened sin, of hopeless damnation. It meant utterdepravity of the will; he did not even feel remorse any more. Here he is, then, as if unfastened from his child's soul--separated fromhimself. The object of his youthful faith has no more meaning for him. Heunderstands no longer, and it is all one to him that he does not. Thus, told by himself, does this first crisis of Augustin's life emerge from theautobiography; and it takes on a general significance. Once for all, undera definite form, and to a certain degree classic, he has diagnosed withhis subtle experience of doctor of souls the pubescent crisis in all youngmen of his age, in all the young Christians who are to come after him. Forthe story of Augustin is the story of each of us. The loss of faith alwaysoccurs when the senses first awaken. At this critical moment, when natureclaims us for her service, the consciousness of spiritual things is, inmost cases, either eclipsed or totally destroyed. The gradual usage to thebrutalities of the instinct ends by killing the sensitiveness of the inwardfeelings. It is not reason which turns the young man from God; it is theflesh. Scepticism but provides him with excuses for the new life he isleading. Thus started, Augustin was not able to pull up half-way on the road ofpleasure; he never did anything by halves. In these vulgar revels of theordinary wild youth, he wanted again to be best, he wanted to be first ashe was at school. He stirred up his companions and drew them after him. They in their turn drew him. Among them was found that Alypius, who was thefriend of all his life, who shared his faults and mistakes, who followedhim even in his conversion, and became Bishop of Thagaste. These two futureshepherds of Christ roamed the streets with the lost sheep. They spentthe nights in the open spaces of the town, playing, or wantonly dreamingbefore cups of cool drinks. They lounged there, stretched out on mats, witha crown of leaves on the head, a jasmine garland round the neck, a roseor marigold thrust above the ear. They never knew what to do next to killtime. So one fine evening the reckless crew took it into their heads torifle a pear tree of one of Patricius's neighbours. This pear tree was justbeyond the vineyard belonging to Augustin's father. The rascals shook downthe pears. They took a few bites to find out the taste, and having decidedthis to be rather disappointing, they chucked all the rest to the hogs. In this theft, done merely for the pleasure of the thing, Augustin seesan evidence of diabolical mischief. Doubtless he committed many anothermisdeed where, like this, the whole attraction lay in the Satanic joyof breaking the law. His fury for dissolute courses knew no rest. DidMonnica observe anything of this change in Augustin? The boy, grown big, had escaped from the supervision of the women's apartments. If the motherguessed anything, she did not guess all. It fell to her husband to open hereyes. With the freedom of manners among the ancients, Augustin relates thefact quite plainly. .. . That took place in the bath-buildings at Thagaste. He was bathing with his father, probably in the _piscina_ of cold baths. The bathers who came out of the water with dripping limbs were printingwet marks of their feet upon the mosaic flooring, when Patricius, who waswatching them, suddenly perceived that his son had about him the signsof manhood, that he was already bearing--as Augustin says himself in hispicturesque language--the first signs of turbulent youth, like another_toga praetexta_. Patricius, as a good pagan, welcomed with jubilation thispromise of grand-children, and rushed off joyously to brag of his discoveryto Monnica. She took the news in quite another way. Frightened at the ideaof the dangers to which her son's virtue was exposed, she lectured himin private. But Augustin, from the height of his sixteen years, laughedat her. "A lot of old-women's gossip! Why does she want to talk aboutthings she can't understand!. .. " Tired out at last, Monnica tried to geta promise from her son that he would at least have some restraint in hisdissipation--that he would avoid women of the town, and above all, that hewould have nothing to do with married women. For the rest, she put him inGod's hands. It may be wondered--Augustin himself wonders--that she did not think offinding him a wife. They marry early in Africa. Even now any Arab labourerbuys a wife for his son, hardly turned sixteen, so that the fires of a toowarm youth may be quenched in marriage. But Monnica, who was not yet asaint, acted in this matter like a foreseeing and practical woman of theprosperous class. A wife would be a drag for a young man like Augustin, whoseemed likely to have such a brilliant career. A too early marriage wouldjeopardize his future. Before all things, it was important that he shouldbecome an illustrious rhetorician, and raise the fortunes of the family. For her, all else yielded to this consideration. But she hoped at leastthat the headstrong student might consent to be good into the bargain. This was also Patricius's way of looking at the matter. And so, saysAugustin, "My father gave himself no concern how I grew towards Thee, orhow chaste I was, provided only that I became a man of culture--howeverdestitute of Thy culture, O God. .. . My mother and he slackened the curbwithout regard to due severity, and I was suffered to enjoy myselfaccording to my dissolute fancy. " Meanwhile, Patricius was now become(very tardily) a catechumen. The entreaties of his wife had won him to theCatholic faith. But his sentiments were not much more Christian--"He hardlythought of Thee, my God, " acknowledges his son, who nevertheless waspleased at this conversion. If Patricius decided to get converted, it wasprobably from political reasons. Since the death of Julian the Apostate, paganism appeared finally conquered. The Emperor Valentinianus had justproclaimed heavy penalties against night-sacrifices. In Africa, theCount Romanus persecuted the Donatists. All the Christians in Thagastewere Catholic. What was the good of keeping up a useless and dangerousresistance? Perhaps the end of Patricius--which was near--was as edifyingas Monnica could wish. But at all events, at the present moment, he wasnot the man to interfere with Augustin's pleasures: he only thought ofthe eventual fortune of the young man. Alone, Monnica might have had someinfluence on him, and she herself was fascinated by his future career inthe world. Perhaps, to quiet her conscience, she said to herself that thisfrivolous education would be more or less of a help to her son towardsbringing him back to God, that a day would come when the famous rhetoricianwould plead the cause of Christ?. .. Scandalized though she might be at his conduct, it is however apparent thatit was about this time she began to get fonder of him, to worry over him asher favourite child. But it was not till much later that the union betweenmother and son became quite complete. Too many old customs still remainedpreventing close intercourse between the men and women of a family. And itwill hardly do to picture such intimacy from the intimacy which may existbetween a mother and son of our own time. There was none of the spoiling, or indulgence, or culpable weakness which enervates maternal tenderness andmakes it injurious to the energy of a manly character. Monnica was severeand a little rough. If she let her feelings be seen, it was solely beforeGod. And yet it is most certain that in the depth of her heart she lovedAugustin, not only as a future member of Christ, but humanly, as a womanfrustrated of love in a badly assorted marriage may spend her love on herchild. The brutality of pagan ways revolted her, and she poured on thisyoung head all her stored-up affection. In Augustin she loved the being shewished she could love in her husband. A number of personal considerations were no doubt involved in the deep andunselfish attachment she had for her son: instinctively, she looked for himto protect her against the father's violence. She felt that he would be thesupport of her old age, and also, she foresaw dimly what one day he wouldbe. All this aided to bring about the tie, the understanding, which grewmore and more close between Augustin and Monnica. And so from this timethey both appear to us as they were to appear to all posterity--the patternof the Christian Mother and Son. Thanks to them, the hard law of theancients has been abrogated. There shall be no more barriers between themother and her child. No longer shall it be vain exterior rites which drawtogether the members of the same family: they shall communicate in spiritand truth. Heart speaketh to heart. The fellowship of souls is founded, and the ties of the domestic hearth are drawn close, as they never were inantiquity. No more shall they work in concert only for material things;they will join together to love--and to love each other more. The son willbelong more to his mother. At the time we have now come to, Monnica was already undertaking theconquest of Augustin's soul. She prayed for him fervently. The young mancared very little: gratitude came to him only after his conversion. At thistime he was thinking of nothing but amusement. For this he even forgot hiscareer. But Monnica and Patricius thought of it constantly--especiallyPatricius, who gave himself enormous trouble to enable this student on aholiday to finish his studies. Eventually he got together the necessarymoney, possibly borrowed enough to make up the sum from some rich landownerwho was the patron of the people of small means in Thagaste--say, thatgorgeous Romanianus, to whom Augustin, in acknowledgment, dedicated one ofhis first books. The young man could now take the road for Carthage. He left by himself, craving for knowledge and glory and pleasure, his heartfull of longing for what he knew not, and melancholy without cause. Whatwas going to become of him in the great, unknown city? THE SECOND PART THE ENCHANTMENT OF CARTHAGE Amare et amari. "To love and to be loved. " _Confessions_, III, i. I CARTHAGO VENERIS "I went to Carthage, where shameful loves bubbled round me like boilingoil. " This cry of repentance, uttered by the converted Augustin twenty-fiveyears later, does not altogether stifle his words of admiration for theold capital of his country. One can see this patriotic admiration stirringbetween the lines. Carthage made a very strong impression on him. He gaveit his heart and remained faithful to the end. His enemies, the Donatists, called him "the Carthaginian arguer. " After he became Bishop of Hippo, hewas continually going to Carthage to preach, or dispute, or consult hiscolleagues, or to ask something from men in office. When he is not there, he is ever speaking of it in his treatises and plain sermons. He takescomparisons from it: "You who have been to Carthage--" he often says tohis listeners. For the boy from little Thagaste to go to Carthage, wasabout the same as for our youths from the provinces to go to Paris. _VeniCarthaginem_--in these simple words there is a touch of naive emphasiswhich reveals the bewilderment of the Numidian student just landed in thegreat city. And, in fact, it was one of the five great capitals of the Empire: therewere Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria--Carthage. Carthage was thesea-port capital of the whole western Mediterranean. With its large newstreets, its villas, its temples, its palaces, its docks, its variouslydressed cosmopolitan population, it astonished and delighted the schoolboyfrom Madaura. Whatever local marks were left about him, or signs of therustic simpleton, it brushed off. At first, Augustin must have felt himselfas good as lost there. There he was, his own master, with nobody to counsel and direct him. Hedoes indeed mention his fellow-countryman, that Romanianus, the patron ofhis father and of other people in Thagaste, as a high and generous friendwho invited him to his house when he, a poor youth, came to finish hisstudies in a strange city, and helped him, not only with his purse, butwith his friendship. Unfortunately the allusion is not very clear. Still, it does seem to shew that Augustin, in the first days after his arrival atCarthage, stayed with Romanianus. It is not in the least improbable thatRomanianus had a house at Carthage and spent the winter there: during therest of the year he would be in his country houses round about Thagaste. This opulent benefactor might not have been satisfied with giving Augustina good "tip" for his journey when he was leaving his native town, but mayalso have put him up in his own house at Carthage. Such was the atonementfor those enormous fortunes of antiquity: the rich had to give freely andconstantly. With the parcelling out of wealth we have become much moreegoistical. In any case, Romanianus, taken up with his pleasures and business, couldnot have been much of a guide for Monnica's son. Augustin was thereforewithout control, or very nearly. No doubt he came to Carthage with a strongdesire to increase his knowledge and get renown, but still more athirstfor love and the emotions of sentiment. The love-prelude was deliriouslyprolonged for him. He was at that time so overwhelmed by it, that it is thefirst thing he thinks of when he relates his years at Carthage. "To loveand be loved" seems to him, as to his dear Alexandrine poets, the singleobject of life. Yet he was not in love, "but he loved the idea of love. "_Nondum amabam, et amare amabam . .. Amare amans. .. . _ Truly, never a pagan poet had hitherto found such language to speakof love. These subtle phrases are not only the work of a marvellousword-smith: through their almost imperceptible shades of meaning may bedescried an entirely new soul, the pleasure-loving soul of the old worldawakening to spiritual life. Modern people have repeated the words morethan enough, but by translating them too literally--"I loved to love"--theyhave perhaps distorted the sense. They have made Augustin a kind ofRomantic like Alfred de Musset, a dilettante in love. Augustin is not somodern, although he often seems one of ourselves. When he wrote those wordshe was a bishop and a penitent. What strikes him above all in looking backupon his uneasy and feverish life as a youth and young man, is the greatonrush of all his being which swept him towards love. Plainly, man is madefor love, since he loves without object and without cause, since in itselfalone the idea of love is already for him a beginning of love. Only hefalls into error in giving to creatures a heart that the Creator alone canfill and satisfy. In this love for love's sake, Augustin discerned the signof the predestined soul whose tenderness will find no rest but in God. Thatis why he repeats this word "Love" with a kind of intoxication. He knowsthat those who love like him cannot love long with a human love. Nor doeshe blush to acknowledge it:--he loved--he loved with all his soul--heloved to the point of loving the coming of love. Happy intimation for theChristian! A heart so afire is pledged to the eternal marriage. With this heat of passion, this lively sensibility, Augustin was a prey forCarthage. The voluptuous city took complete hold on him by its charm andits beauty, by all the seductions of mind and sense, by its promises ofeasy enjoyment. First of all, it softened this young provincial, used to the harder countrylife of his home; it relaxed the Numidian contracted by the roughness ofhis climate; it cooled his eyes burned by the sun in the full-flowing ofits waters and the suavity of its horizons. It was a city of laziness, andabove all, of pleasure, as well for those plunged in business as for theidlers. They called it _Carthago Veneris_--Carthage of Venus. And certainlythe old Phoenician Tanit always reigned there. Since the rebuilding of hertemple by the Romans, she had transformed herself into _Virgo Coelestis_. This Virgin of Heaven was the great Our Lady of unchastity, towards whomstill mounted the adoration of the African land four hundred years afterthe birth of Christ. "Strange Virgin, " Augustin was to say later, "who canonly be honoured by the loss of virginity. " Her dissolving influence seemedto overcome the whole region. There is no more feminine country than thisCarthaginian peninsula, ravished on all sides by the caress of the waters. Stretched out between her lakes on the edge of the sea, Carthage lounged inthe humid warmth of her mists, as if in the suffocating atmosphere of hervapour-baths. She stole away the energies, but she was an enchantment for the eyes. From the top of the impressive flight of steps which led up to the templeof Æsculapius on the summit of the Acropolis, Augustin could see at hisfeet the huge, even-planned city, with its citadel walls which spread outindefinitely, its gardens, blue waters, flaxen plains, and the mountains. Did he pause on the steps at sunset, the two harbours, rounded cup-shape, shone, rimmed by the quays, like lenses of ruby. To the left, the Lake ofTunis, stirless, without a ripple, as rich in ethereal lights as a Venetianlagoon, radiated in ever-altering sheens, delicate and splendid. In front, across the bay, dotted with the sails of ships close-hauled to the wind, beyond the wind-swept and shimmering intervals, the mountains of Rhodesraised their aerial summit-lines against the sky. What an outlook on theworld for a young man dreaming of fame! And what more exhilarating spotthan this Mount Byrsa, where, in deep layers, so many heroic memories weregathered and superimposed. The great dusty plains which bury themselvesfar off in the sands of the desert, the mountains--yes, and isles andheadlands, all bowed before the Hill that Virgil sang and seemed to doher reverence. She held in awe the innumerable tribes of the barbariccontinent; she was mistress of the sea. Rome herself, from the height ofher Palatine, surged less imperial. More than any other of the young men seated with him on the benches of theschool of rhetoric, Augustin hearkened to the dumb appeals which camefrom the ancient ruins and new palaces of Carthage. But the supple andtreacherous city knew the secret of enchaining the will. She tempted him bythe open display of her amusements. Under this sun which touches to beautythe plaster of a hut, the grossest pleasures have an attraction which menof the North cannot understand. The overflowing of lust surrounds you. This prolific swarming, all these bodies, close-pressed and soft withsweat, give forth as it were a breath of fornication which melts the will. Augustin breathed in with delight the heavy burning air, loaded with humanodours, which filled the streets and squares of Carthage. To all the boldsoliciting, to all the hands stretched out to detain him as he walked, heyielded. But for a mind like his Carthage had more subtle allurements in reserve. He was taken by her theatres, by the verses of her poets and the melodiesof her musicians. He shed tears at the plays of Menander and Terence;he lamented upon the misfortunes of separated lovers; he shared theirquarrels, rejoiced and despaired with them. And still he awaited theepiphany of Love--that Love which the performance of the actors shewed himto be so touching and fine. Such then was Augustin, given over to the irresponsibility of his eighteenyears--a heart spoiled by romantic literature, a mind impatient to tryevery sort of intellectual adventure in the most corrupting and bewitchingcity known to the pagan centuries, set amidst one of the most entrancinglandscapes in the world. II THE AFRICAN ROME Carthage did not offer only pleasures to Augustin; it was besides anextraordinary subject to think about for an understanding so alert andall-embracing as his. At Carthage he understood the Roman grandeur as he could not at Madauraand the Numidian towns. Here, as elsewhere, the Romans made a point ofimpressing the minds of conquered races by the display of their strengthand magnificence. Above all, they aimed at the immense. The towns builtby them offered the same decorative and monumental character of theGreek cities of the Hellenistic period, which the Romans had furtherexaggerated--a character not without emphasis and over-elaboration, butwhich was bound to astonish, and that was the main thing in their view. Inshort, their ideal was not perceptibly different from that of our moderntown councillors. To lay out streets which intersected at right angles; tocreate towns cut into even blocks like chessboards; to multiply prospectsand huge architectural masses--all the Roman cities of this period revealedsuch an aim, with an almost identical plan. Erected after this type, the new Carthage caused the old to be forgotten. Everybody agreed that it was second only to Rome. The African writerssquandered the most hyperbolical praises upon it. For them it is "Thesplendid, the august, the sublime Carthage. " Although there may well be acertain amount of triviality or of patriotic exaggeration in these praises, it is certain that the Roman capital of the Province of Africa was no lessconsiderable than the old metropolis of the Hanno and Barcine factions. With a population almost as large as that of Rome, it had almost as greata circumference. It must further be recalled that as it had no rampartstill the Vandal invasion, the city overflowed into the country. With itsgardens, villas, and burial-places of the dead, it covered nearly theentire peninsula, to-day depopulated. Carthage, as well as Rome, had her Capitol and Palatine upon Mount Byrsa, where rose no doubt a temple consecrated to the Capitolean triune deities, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, not far from the great temple of Æsculapius, amodern transformation of the old Punic Eschmoum. Hard by these sanctuaries, the Proconsul's palace dominated Carthage from the height of the acclivityof the Acropolis. The Forum was at the foot of the hill, probably in theneighbourhood of the ports--a Forum built and arranged in the Roman way, with its shops of bankers and money-changers placed under the circulargalleries, with the traditional image of Marsyas, and a number of statuesof local celebrities. Apuleius no doubt had his there. Further off was theHarbour Square, where gathered foreigners recently landed and the idlers ofthe city in search of news, and where the booksellers offered the new booksand pamphlets. There was to be seen one of the curiosities of Carthage--amosaic representing fabulous monsters, men without heads, and men with onlyone leg and one foot--a huge foot under which, lying upon their backs, theysheltered from the sun, as under a parasol. On account of this feature theywere called the _sciapodes_. Augustin, who like everybody else had pausedbefore these grotesque figures, recalls them somewhere to his readers. .. . Beside the sea, in the lower town and upon the two near hills of theAcropolis, were a number of detached buildings that the old authors havepreserved the names of and briefly described. Thanks to the zeal ofarchæologists, it is now become impossible to tell where they stood. The pagan sanctuaries were numerous. That of the goddess Coelestis, thegreat patroness of Carthage, occupied a space of five thousand feet. Itcomprised, besides the actual [Greek: hieron], where stood the image of thegoddess, gardens, sacred groves, and courts surrounded with columns. Theancient Phoenician Moloch had also his temple under the name of Saturn. They called him _The Old One_, so Augustin tells us, and his worshipperswere falling away. On the other hand, Carthage had another sanctuary whichwas very fashionable, a _Serapeum_ as at Alexandria, where were manifestedthe pomps of the Egyptian ritual, celebrated by Apuleius. Neighbouringthe holy places, came the places of amusement: the theatre, the Odeum, circus, stadium, and amphitheatre--this last, of equal dimensions withthe Colosseum at Rome, its gallery rising upon gallery, and its realisticsculptures of animals and artisans. Then there were the buildings for thepublic service: the immense cisterns of the East and the Malga, the greataqueduct, which, after being carried along a distance of fifty-five miles, emptied the water of the Zaghouan into the reservoirs at Carthage. Finally, there were the Baths, some of which we know--those of Antoninus and ofMaximianus, and those of Gargilius, where one of the most importantCouncils known to the history of the African Church assembled. There werelikewise many Christian basilicas at the time of Augustin. The authorsmention seventeen: it is likely there were more. That of Damous-el-Karita, the only one of which considerable traces have been found, was vast andrichly decorated, and was perhaps the cathedral of Carthage. What other buildings there were are utterly lost to history. Itmay be conjectured, however, that Carthage, as well as Rome, had a_septizonium_--a decorative building with peristyles one above the otherwhich surrounded a reservoir. In fact, it is claimed that the one atRome was copied from Carthage. Straight streets paved with large flagsintersected around these buildings, forming a network of long avenues, verybright and ventilated. Some of them were celebrated in the ancient worldeither for their beauty or the animation of their trade: the street of theJewellers, the street of Health, of Saturn, of Coelestis, too, or of Juno. The fig and vegetable markets and the public granaries were also some ofthe main centres of Carthaginian life. It is unquestionable that Carthage, with its buildings and statues, itssquares, avenues and public gardens, looked like a large capital, and wasa perfect example of that ideal of rather brutal magnificence and strengthwhich the Romans obtruded everywhere. And even while it dazzled the young provincial from Thagaste, the AfricanRome shewed him the virtue of order--social and political order. Carthage, the metropolis of Western Africa, maintained an army of officials whohandled the government in its smallest details. First of all, therewere the representatives of the central power, the imperial rulers--theProconsul, a sort of vice-emperor, who was surrounded by a full court, acivil and military staff, a privy council, an _officium_ which included acrowd of dignitaries and subaltern clerks. Then there was the Proprætorof Africa who, being in control of the government of the whole Africanprovince, had an _officium_ still larger perhaps than the Proconsul's. After them came the city magistrates, who were aided in their functions bythe Council of the Decurions--the Senate of Carthage. These Carthaginiansenators cut a considerable figure: for them their colleagues at Romewere full of airs and graces, and the Emperors endeavoured to keep themin a good-humour. All the details of city government came under theirsupervision: the slaughter-houses, buildings, the gathering of municipaltaxes, and the police, which comprised even the guardians of the Forum. Then there were the army and navy. The home port of a grain-carrying fleetwhich conveyed the African cereals to Ostia, Carthage could starve Romeif she liked. The grain and oil of all countries lay in her docks--thestorehouses of the state provisions, which were in charge of a specialprefect who had under his orders a whole corporation of overseers andclerks. Augustin must have heard a good deal of grumbling at Carthage against thisexcess of officialism. But, all the same, so well-governed a city was avery good school for a young man who was to combine later the duties ofbishop, judge, and governor. The blessings of order, of what was called"the Roman peace" no doubt impressed him the more, as he himself came froma turbulent district often turned upside down by the quarrels of religioussects and by the depredations of the nomads--a boundary-land of the Sahararegions where it was much harder to bring the central government intoplay than in Carthage and the coast-towns. To appreciate the beauty ofgovernment, there is nothing like living in a country where all is at themercy of force or the first-comer's will. Such of the Barbarians who camein contact with Roman civilization were overcome with admiration for thegood order that it established. But what astonished them more than anythingelse was that the Empire was everywhere. No man, whatever his race or country, could help feeling proud to belong tothe Roman city. He was at home in all the countries in the world subjectto Rome. Our Europe, split into nationalities, can hardly understand nowthis feeling of pride, so different from our narrow patriotisms. The way tofeel something of it is to go to the colonies: out there the least of usmay believe himself a sovereign, simply from the fact that he is a subjectof the governing country. This feeling was very strong in the old world. Carthage, where the striking effect of the Empire appeared in all itsbrilliancy, would increase it in Augustin. He had only to look around himto value the extent of the privilege conferred by Rome on her citizens. Mencoming from all countries, without exception of race, were, so to speak, made partners of the Empire and collaborated in the grandeur of the Romanscheme. If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebratedSymmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented, the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The CountTheodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus inMauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up, for the most part, of Gauls. Later on, under Arcadius, another Gaul, Rufinus, shall be master of the whole of the East. An active mind like Augustin's could not remain indifferent before thisspectacle of the world thrown open by Rome to all men of talent. He had thesoul of a poet, quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted onthe Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquiredthe habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all thepetty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did notclose himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dreamwas that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the Empire of the Cæsars. Still, it is desirable not to fall into error upon this Roman unity. Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of theMediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions, special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere. The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid characterof this country without unity was illustrated by the streaks found in theCarthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one anotherin the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by theslave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed, of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion. And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas. Augustin, who was at heart a mystic, but also a dialectician extremely fondof showy discussions, found in Carthage a lively summary of the religionsand philosophies of his day. During these years of study and reflection hecaptured booty of knowledge and observation which he would know how to makeuse of in the future. In the Carthage sanctuaries and schools, in the squares and the streets, he could see pass the disciples of all the systems, the props of all thesuperstitions, the devotees of all the religions. He heard the shrillclamour of disputes, the tumult of fights and riots. When a man was at theend of his arguments, he knocked down his opponent. The authorities had agood deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician, must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactlyimprovise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited theenlightenment of the truth, he studied the Carthaginian Babel. First of all, there was the official religion, the most obvious and perhapsthe most brilliant, that of the Divinity of the Emperors, which was stillkept up even under the Christian Cæsars. Each year, at the end of October, the elected delegates of the entire province, having at their head the_Sacerdos province_, the provincial priest, arrived at Carthage. Theirleader, clad in a robe broidered with palms, gold crown on head, made hissolemn entry into the city. It was a perfect invasion, each member draggingin his wake a mob of clients and servants. The Africans, with theirtaste for pomp and colour, seized the chance to give themselves over to adisplay of ruinous sumptuosities: rich dresses, expensive horses splendidlycaparisoned, processions, sacrifices, public banquets, games at the circusand amphitheatre. These strangers so overcrowded the city that the imperialGovernment had to forbid them, under severe penalties, to stay longerthan five days. A very prudent measure! At these times, collisions wereinevitable between pagans and Christians. It was desirable to scatter suchcrowds as soon as possible, for riots were always smouldering in theirmidst. No less thronged were the festivals of the Virgin of Heaven. A survivalof the national religion, these feasts were dear to the hearts of theCarthaginians. Augustin went to them with his fellow-students. "We troopedthere from every quarter, " he says. There was a great gathering of peoplein the interior court which led up to the temple. The statue, taken fromits sanctuary, was placed before the peristyle upon a kind of repository. Wantons, arrayed with barbarous lavishness, danced around the holyimage; actors performed and sang hymns. "Our eager eyes, " Augustin addsmaliciously, "rested in turn on the goddess, and on the girls, heradorers. " The Great Mother of the Gods, the Goddess of Mount Berecyntus, was worshipped with similar license. Every year the people of Carthage wentto wash her solemnly in the sea. Her statue, carried in a splendid litter, robed with precious stuffs, curled and farded, passed through the streetsof the city, with its guard of mummers and Corybants. These last, "withhair greasy from pomade, pale faces, and a loose and effeminate walk, heldout bowls for alms to the onlookers. " The devotion to Isis was yet another excuse for processions: the _Serapeum_was a rival attraction to the temple of the Heavenly Maiden. If we maytrust Tertullian, the Africans swore only by Serapis. Possibly Mithrashad also worshippers in Carthage. Anyhow, the occult religions were fullyrepresented there. Miracle-working was becoming more and more the basiseven of paganism. Never had the soothsayers been more flourishing. Everybody, in secret, pried into the entrails of the sacrificial victims, or used magic spells. As to the wizards and astrologists, they did businessopenly. Augustin himself consulted them, like all the Carthaginians. Thepublic credulity had no limits. On the opposite side from the pagan worship, the sects which had sprungfrom Christianity sprouted. True, Africa has given birth to but a smallnumber of heresies: the Africans had not the subtle mind of the Orientalsand they were not given to theorizing. But a good many of the Easternheresies had got into Carthage. Augustin must have still met Arians there, although at this period Arianism was dying out in Africa. What is certainis that orthodox Catholicism was in a very critical state. The Donatistscaptured its congregations and churches; they were unquestionably in themajority. They raised altar against altar. If Genethlius was the Catholicbishop, the Donatist bishop was Parmenianus. And they claimed to be moreCatholic than their opponents. They boasted that they were the Church, thesingle, the unique Church, the Church of Christ. But these schismaticsthemselves were already splitting up into many sects. At the time Augustinwas studying at Carthage, Rogatus, Bishop of Tenes, had just brokenpublicly with Parmenian's party. Another Donatist, Tyconius, publishedbooks wherein he traversed many principles dear to his fellow-religionists. Doubt darkened consciences. Amid these controversies, where was the truth?Among whom did the Apostolic tradition dwell? To put the finishing touch on this anarchy, a sect which likewise derivedfrom Christianity--Manicheeism--began to have numerous adepts in Africa. Watched with suspicion by the Government, it concealed part of itsdoctrine, the most scandalous and subversive. But the very mystery whichenveloped it, helped it to get adherents. Among all these apostles preaching their gospel, these devotees beatingthe drum before their god, these theologians reciprocally insulting andexcommunicating one another, Augustin brought the superficial scepticism ofhis eighteenth year. He wanted no more of the religion in which his motherhad brought him up. He was a good talker, a clever dialectician; he was ina hurry to emancipate himself, to win freedom for his way of thinking asfor his way of life; and he meant to enjoy his youth. With such gifts, andwith such dispositions, he could only choose among all these doctrines thatwhich would help most the qualities of his mind, at once flattering hisintellectual pretensions, and leaving his pleasure-loving instincts a looserein. III THE CARTHAGE STUDENT However strong were the attractions of the great city, Augustin well knewthat he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as anamateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future--makehis fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of thedifficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had suppliedhim with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to bea student who worked. With his extraordinary facility, he stood out at once among hisfellow-students. In the rhetoric school, where he attended lectures, he was, he tells us, not only at the top, but he was the leader of hiscompanions. He led in everything. At that time, rhetoric was extremelyfar-reaching: it had come to take in all the divisions of education, including science and philosophy. Augustin claims to have learned all thatthe masters of his time had to teach: rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, music, mathematics. Having gone through the whole scholastic system, he thought ofstudying law, and aided by his gift of words, to become a barrister. For agifted young man it was the shortest and surest road to money and honours. Unhappily for him, hardly was he settled down at Carthage than his fatherdied. This made his future again problematical. How was he to keep up hisstudies without the sums coming from his father? The affairs of Patriciusmust have been left in the most parlous condition. But Monnica, clinging toher ambitious plans for her son, knew how to triumph over all difficulties, and she continued to send Augustin money. Romanianus, the Mæcenas ofThagaste, who was doubtless applied to by her, came once more to the rescueof the hard-up student. The young man, set at ease about his expenses, resumed light-heartedly his studious and dissipated life. As a matter of fact, this family bereavement does not seem to have causedhim much grief. In the _Confessions_ he mentions the death of his father ina few words, and, so to speak, in parenthesis, as an event long foreseenwithout much importance. And yet he owed him a great deal. Patricius washard pressed, and he took immense trouble to provide the means for hisson's education. But with the fine egotism of youth, Augustin perhapsthought it enough to have profited by his father's sacrifices, anddispensed himself from gratitude. In any case, his affection for his fathermust have been rather lukewarm; the natural differences between them rantoo deep. In these years, Monnica filled all the heart of Augustin. But the influence of Monnica herself was very slight upon this grown-upyouth, eighteen years old. He had forgotten her lessons, and it did nottrouble him much if his conduct added to the worries of the widow, who wasnow struggling with her husband's creditors. At heart he was a good son andhe deeply loved his mother, but inevitably the pressure of the life aroundhim swept him along. He has pictured his companions for us, after his conversion, as terribleblackguards. No doubt he is too severe. Those young men were neither betternor worse than elsewhere. They were rowdy, as they were in the other citiesof the Empire, and as one always is at that age. Imperial regulationsenjoined the police to have an eye on the students, to note their conductand what company they kept. They were not to become members of prohibitedsocieties, not to go too often to the theatre, nor to waste their time inraking and feastings. If their conduct became too outrageous, they were tobe beaten with rods and sent back to their parents. At Carthage there wasa hard-living set of men who called themselves "The Wreckers. " Their greatpleasure was to go and make a row at a professor's lecture; they wouldburst noisily into the classroom and smash up anything they could lay holdof. They amused themselves also by "ragging" the freshmen, jeering at theirsimplicity, and playing them a thousand tricks. Things haven't much changedsince then. The fellow-students of Augustin were so like students ofto-day that the most modern terms suggest themselves to describe theirperformances. Augustin, who was on the whole well conducted, and, as behoved a futureprofessor, had a respect for discipline, disapproved of "The Wreckers" andtheir violence. This did not prevent him from enjoying himself in theirsociety. He was overcome with shame because he could not keep pace withthem--we must believe it at least, since he tells us so himself. With acertain lack of assurance, blended however with much juvenile vanity, hejoined the band. He listened to that counsel of vulgar wisdom which isdisastrous to souls like his: "Do as others do. " He accordingly did doas the others; he knew all their debauchery, or he imagined he did, forhowever low he went, he was never able to do anything mean. He was then sofar from the faith that he arranged love-trysts in the churches. "I was notafraid to think of my lust, and plan a scheme for securing the deadly fruitof sin, even within the walls of Thy church during the celebration of Thymysteries. " We might be reading the confession of a sensualist of to-day. One grows astonished at these morals, at once so old and so modern. What, already! These young Christian basilicas, but newly sprung out of theearth, where the men were strictly separated from the women--were theyalready become places of assignation, where love-letters were slipped intohands, and procuresses sold their furtive services!. .. At length the great happiness for which Augustin had so long been sighingwas granted him: he loved and he was loved. He loved as he indeed was able to love, with all the impetuosity of hisnature and all the fire of his temperament, with all his heart and all hissenses. "I plunged headlong into love, whose fetters I longed to wear. " Butas he went at once to extremes, as he meant to give himself altogether, and expected all in return, he grew irritated at not receiving this samekind of love. It was never enough love for him. Yet he was loved, and thevery certainty of this love, always too poor to his mind, exasperated theviolence and pertinacity of his desire. "Because I was loved, I proudlyriveted round myself the chain of woe, to be soon scourged with the red-hotiron rods of jealousy, torn by suspicions, fears, anger, and quarrels. "This was passion with chorus and orchestra, a little theatrical, with itsviolences, its alternations between fury and ecstasy, such as an African, steeped in romantic literature, would conceive it. Deceived, he flunghimself in desperate pursuit of the ever-flitting love. He had certainlymore than one passion. Each one left him more hungry than the last. He was sensual, and he felt each time how brief is pleasure, in what alimited circle all enjoyment turns. He was tender, eager to give himself;and he saw plainly that one never gives oneself quite altogether, that evenin the maddest hours of surrender one always reserves oneself in secret, keeping for oneself something of oneself; and he felt that most of the timehis tenderness got no answer. When the joyous heart brings the offering ofits love, the heart of her he loves is absent. And when it is there, on theedge of the lips, decked and smiling to meet the loved one, it is the otherwho is absent. Almost never do they join together, and they never jointogether altogether. And so this Love, which claims to be constant and eveneternal, ought to be, if it would prolong itself, a continual act of faith, and hope, and charity. To believe in it in spite of its darkening andfalling away; to hope its return, often against all evidence; to pardon itsinjustices and sometimes its foul actions--how many are capable of suchabnegation? Augustin went through all that. He was in despair about it. And then, the nostalgia of predestined souls took hold of him. He had anindistinct feeling that these human loves were unworthy of him, and thatif he must have a master, he was born to serve another Master. He had adesire to shake off the platitude of here below, the melancholy fen wherestagnated what he calls "the marsh of the flesh"; to escape, in a word, from the wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; toburn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go andpitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where--upon some unapproachablemountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches oflight and space. .. . These first loves of Augustin were really too fierce to last. Theyburned up themselves. Augustin did not keep them up long. There was inhim, besides, an instinct which counteracted his exuberant, amoroussentimentality--the sense of beauty. That in itself was enough to make himpause on the downhill of riot. The anarchy and commotion of passion wasrepellent to a mind devoted to clearness and order. But there was stillanother thing--the son of the Thagaste freeholder had any amount of commonsense. That at least was left to him of the paternal heritage. A youth ofwhat we call the lower middle class, strictly brought up in the hard andfrugal discipline of the provinces, he felt the effects of his training. The bohemianism in which his friends revelled could not hold himindefinitely. Besides this, the career he desired, that of a barristeror professor, had a preliminary obligation to maintain a certain outwarddecorum. He himself tells us so; in the midst of his most disreputableperformances he aspired to be known for his fashion and wit--_elegans atqueurbanus_. Politeness of speech and manners, the courteous mutual deferenceof the best society--such, was the ideal of this budding professor ofrhetoric. Anxiety about his future, joined to his rapid disenchantments, ere longsobered the student: he just took his fling and then settled down. Loveturned for him into sensual habit. His head became clear for study andmeditation. The apprentice to rhetoric liked his business. Up to hislast breath, despite his efforts to change, he continued, like all hiscontemporaries, to love rhetoric. He handled words like a worker in verbalswho is aware of their price and knows all their resources. Even after hisconversion, if he condemns profane literature as a poisoner of souls, heabsolves the beauty of language. "I accuse not words, " he says. "Wordsare choice and precious vessels. I accuse the wine of error that drunkendoctors pour out for us into these fair goblets. " At the Rhetoric School hetook extreme pleasure in declaiming. He was applauded; the professor gavehim as an example to the others. These scholastic triumphs foretold othersmore celebrated and reverberating. And so, in his heart, literary vanityand ambition disputed the ever-lively illusions of love. And then, aboveall! he had to live; Monnica's remittances were necessarily small; thegenerosity of Romanianus had its limit. So he beat about to enlarge hissmall student's purse. He wrote verses for poetic competitions. Perhapsalready he was able to act as tutor to certain of his fellow-students, lessadvanced. If the need of loving tormented his sentimental heart, he tried to assuageit in friendship. He loved friendship as he loved love. He was a passionateand faithful friend up to his death. At this time of his life, he wasriveting friendships which were never to be broken. He had beside him hisfellow-countryman, Alypius, the future Bishop of Thagaste, who had followedhim to Carthage and would, later on, follow him to Milan; Nebridius, a notless dear companion, fated to die early; Honoratus, whom he drew into hiserrors and later did his best to enlighten; and, finally, that mysteriousyoung man, whose name he does not tell us, and whose loss he mourned asnever any one has mourned the death of a friend. They lived in daily and hourly intimacy, in continual fervour andenthusiasm. They were great theatre-goers, where Augustin was able tosatisfy his desire for tender emotions and romantic adventures. They hadmusical parties; they tried over again the popular airs heard at theOdeum or some other of the innumerable theatres at Carthage. All theCarthaginians, even the populace, were mad about music. The Bishop ofHippo, in his sermons, recalls a mason upon his scaffolding, or a shoemakerin his stall, singing away the tunes of well-known musicians. Then ourstudents strolled on the quays or in the Harbour Square, contemplatingthe many-coloured sea, this splendour of waters at the setting sun, whichAugustin will extol one day with an inspiration unknown to the ancientpoets. Above all, they fell into discussions, commented what they hadlately read, or built up astonishing plans for the future. So flowed by ahappy and charming life, abruptly interpolated with superb anticipations. With what a full heart the Christian penitent calls it back for us!--"Whatdelighted me in the intercourse of my friends, was the talk, the laughter, the good turns we did each other, the common study of the masters ofeloquence, the comradeship, now grave now gay, the differences that leftno sting, as of a man differing with himself, the spice of disagreementwhich seasoned the monotony of consent. Each by turns would instruct orlisten; impatiently we missed the absent friend, and savoured the joy ofhis return. We loved each other with all our hearts, and such tokens offriendship springing from the heart and displayed by a word, a glance, anexpression, by a thousand pretty complaisances, supply the heat which weldssouls together, and of many make one. " It is easily understood that such ties as these had given Augustin apermanent disgust for his rowdy comrades of a former time: he went no morewith "The Wreckers. " The small circle he took pleasure in was quiet andcheerful. Its merriment was controlled by the African gravity. He and hisfriends come before my eyes, a little like those students of theology, orthose cultivated young Arabs, who discuss poetry, lolling indolently uponthe cushions of a divan, while they roll between their fingers the amberbeads of their rosary, or walking slowly under the arcades of a mosque, draped in their white-silk simars, with a serious and meditative air, gestures elegant and measured, courteous and harmonious speech, andsomething discreet, polite, and already clerical in their tone and manners. In fact, the life which Augustin was at that time relishing was the paganlife on its best and gentlest side. The subtle network of habits and dailyoccupations enveloped him little by little. There was some risk of hisgrowing torpid in this soft kind of life, when suddenly a rude shock rousedhim. .. . It was a chance, but in his eyes a providential chance, which putthe _Hortensius_ of Cicero between his hands. Augustin was about nineteen, still a student; according to the order which prevailed in the schools, the time had come for him to read and explain this philosophical dialogue. He had no curiosity about the book. He took it from his sense of duty asa student, because it figured on the schedule. He unrolled the book, andbegan it, doubtless with calm indifference. All of a sudden, a greatunexpected light shone between the lines. His heart throbbed. His wholesoul sprang towards these phrases, so dazzling and revealing. He awokefrom his long drowsiness. Before him shone a marvellous vision. .. . As thisdialogue is lost, we can hardly to-day account for such enthusiasm, andwe hold that the Roman orator was a very middling philosopher. We know, however, through Augustin himself, that the book contained an eloquentpraise of wisdom. And then, words are naught without the soul of thereader; all this, falling into Augustin's soul, rendered a prolonged andmagnificent sound. It is evident, too, that just at the moment when heunrolled the book he was in a condition to receive this uplifting summons. In such minutes, when the heart, ignorant of itself, swells like the seabefore a storm, when all the inner riches of the being overflow, theslightest glimmer is enough to reveal all these imprisoned forces, and theleast shock to set them free. He has at least preserved for us, in pious and faithful gratitude, somephrases of this dialogue which moved him so deeply. Especially does headmire this passage, wherein the author, after a long discussion, ends inthese terms: "If, as pretend the philosophers of old time, who are alsothe greatest and most illustrious, we have a soul immortal and divine, itbehoves us to think, that the more it has persevered in its way, that is tosay, in reason, love, and the pursuit of truth, and the less it has beenintermingled and stained in human error and passion, the easier will it befor it to raise itself and soar again to the skies. " Such phrases, read in a certain state of mind, might well overwhelm thisyoung man, who was ere long to yearn for the cloister and was destined tobe the founder of African monasticism. To give his whole life to the studyof wisdom, to compel himself towards the contemplation of God, to livehere below an almost divine life--this ideal, impossible to pagan wisdom, Augustin was called to realize in the name of Christ. That had dawned onhim, all at once, while he was reading the _Hortensius_. And this idealappeared to him so beautiful, so well worth the sacrifice of all he hadhitherto loved, that nothing else counted for him any more. He despisedrhetoric, the vain studies it compelled him to pursue, the honour and gloryit promised him. What was all that to the prize of wisdom? For wisdom hefelt himself ready to give up the world. .. . But these heroic outburstsdo not, as a rule, keep up very long in natures so changeable andimpressionable as Augustin's. Yet they are not entirely thrown away. Thus, in early youth, come dim revelations of the future. There comes apresentiment of the port to which one will some day be sailing; a glimpseof the task to fulfil, the work to build up; and all this rises before theeyes in an entrancement of the whole being. Though the bright image beeclipsed, perhaps for years, the remembrance of it persists amid the worstdegradations or the worst mediocrities. He who one single time has seen itpass, can never afterwards live quite like other people. This fever calmed, Augustin set himself to reflect. The ancientphilosophers promised him wisdom. But Christ also promised it! Was it notpossible to reconcile them? And was not the Gospel ideal essentially morehuman than that of the pagan philosophers? Suppose he tried to submit tothat, to bring the faith of his childhood into line with his ambitions as ayoung man of intellect? To be good after the manner of his mother, of hisgrandparents, of the good Thagaste servants, of all the humble Christiansouls whose virtues he had been taught to respect, and at the same time torival a Plato by the strength of thought--what a dream! Was it possible?. .. He tells us himself that the illusion was brief, and that he grew coolabout the _Hortensius_ because he did not find the name of Christ in it. Hedeceives himself, probably. At this time he was not so Christian. He yieldsto the temptation of a fine phrase: when he wrote his _Confessions_ he hadnot yet entirely lost this habit. But what remains true is, that feeling the inadequateness of paganphilosophy, he returned for a moment towards Christianity. The Ciceroniandialogue, by disappointing his thirst for the truth, gave him the idea ofknocking at the door of the Church and trying to find out if on that sidethere might not be a practicable road for him. This is why the readingof _Hortensius_ is in Augustin's eyes one of the great dates of his life. Although he fell back in his errors, he takes credit for his effort. He recognizes in it the first sign, and, as it were, a promise of hisconversion. "Thenceforth, my God, began my upward way, and my returntowards Thee. " He began then to study the Holy Scriptures with a more or less seriousintention to instruct himself in them. But to go to the Bible by way ofCicero was to take the worst road. Augustin got lost there. This directpopular style, which only cares about saying things, and not about how theyare said, could only repel the pupil of Carthage rhetoricians, the imitatorof the harmonious Ciceronian sentences. Not only had he much too spoileda taste in literature, but there was also too much literature in thispose of a young man who starts off one fine morning to conquer wisdom. Hewas punished for his lack of sincerity, and especially of humility. Heunderstood nothing of the Scripture, and "I found it, " he says, "a thingnot known to the proud, nor yet laid open to children, but poor inappearance, lofty in operation, and veiled in mysteries. At that time, Iwas not the man to bow my head so as to pass in at its door. ". .. He grew tired very quickly. He turned his back on the Bible, as hehad thrown aside _Hortensius_, and he went to find pasture elsewhere. Nevertheless, his mind had been set in motion. Nevermore was he to knowrepose, till he had found truth. He demanded this truth from all the sectsand all the churches. So it was, that in despair he flung himself intoManicheeism. Some have professed amazement that this honest and practical mind shouldhave stuck fast in a doctrine so tortuous, so equivocal, contaminated byfancies so grossly absurd. But perhaps it is forgotten that there waseverything in Manicheeism. The leaders of the sect did not deliver the bulkof the doctrine all at once to their catechumens; the entire initiation wasa matter of several degrees. Now Augustin never went higher than a simple_auditor_ in the Manichean Church. What attracted specially fine minds tothe Manichees, was that they began by declaring themselves rationalists. To reconcile faith with natural science and philosophy has been the fadof heresiarchs and free-thinkers in all ages. The Manicheans bragged thatthey had succeeded. They went everywhere, crying out: "Truth, Truth!" Thatsuited Augustin very well: it was just what he was looking for. He hastenedto the preachings of these humbugs, impatient to receive at last this"truth, " so noisily announced. From what they said, it was contained inseveral large books written by their prophet under the guidance of the HolyGhost. There was quite a library of them. By way of bamboozling the crowd, they produced some of them which looked very important, ponderous asTables of the Law, richly bound in vellum, and embellished with strikingilluminations. How was it possible to doubt that the entire revelation wascontained in such beautiful books? One felt at once full of respect for areligion which was able to produce in its favour the testimony of such amass of writings. However, the priests did not open them. To allay the impatience of theirhearers, they amused them by criticizing the books and dogmas of theCatholics. This preliminary criticism was the first lesson of theirinstruction. They pointed out any number of incoherences, absurdities, and interpolations in the Bible: according to them, a great part of theScriptures had been foisted on the world by the Jews. But they triumphedespecially in detecting the contradictions of the Gospel narratives. Theysapped them with syllogisms. It is easy to understand that these exercisesin logic should have at once attracted the youthful Augustin. With hisextraordinary dialectical subtilty, he soon became very good at ithimself--much better even than his masters. He made speeches in theirassemblies, fenced against a text, peremptorily refuted it, and reduced hisadversaries to silence. He was applauded, covered with praise. A religionwhich brought him such successes must be the true one. After he became a bishop, he tried to explain to himself how it was thathe fell into Manicheeism, and could find only two reasons. "The first, "he says, "was a friendship which took hold of me under I know not whatappearance of kindness, and was like a cord about my neck. .. . The secondwas those unhappy victories that I almost always won in our disputes. " But there is still another which he mentions elsewhere, and it hadperhaps the most weight. This was the loose moral code which Manicheeismauthorized. This doctrine taught that we are not responsible for the evilwe do. Our sins and vices are the work of the evil Principle--the God ofDarkness, enemy of the God of Light. Now at the moment when Augustin wasreceived as _auditor_ by the Manichees, he had a special need of excusinghis conduct by a moral system so convenient and indulgent. He had justformed his connection with her who was to become the mother of his child. IV THE SWEETNESS OF TEARS Augustin was nearly twenty. He had finished his studies in rhetoric withinthe required time. According to the notions of that age, a young manought to have concluded his course by his twentieth year. If not, he wasconsidered past mending and sent back there and then to his family. It may appear surprising that a gifted student like Augustin did not finishhis rhetoric course sooner. But after his terms at Madaura, he had lostnearly a year at Thagaste. Besides, the life of Carthage had so many charmsfor him that doubtless he was in no hurry to leave. However that may be, the moment was now come for him to make up his mind about his career. The wishes of his parents, the advice of his masters, as well as his ownambitions and qualities, urged him, as we know, to become a barrister. Butnow, suddenly, all his projects for the future changed. Not only did hegive up the law, but at the very moment when all appeared to smile on him, at the opening of his youth, he left Carthage to go and bury himself as ateacher of grammar in the little free-town his birthplace. As he has neglected to give any explanation of this sudden determination, we are reduced to conjectures. It is likely that his mother was botheredabout household expenses and could no longer afford to keep him atCarthage. Besides, she had other children, a son and daughter, to start inlife. Augustin was on the point of being, if not poor, at least very hardup. He must do something to earn his living, and as quickly as possible. In these conditions, the quickest way out of the difficulty was to sellto others what he had bought from his masters. To live, he would open aword-shop, as he calls it disdainfully. But as he had only just ceased tobe a student, he could not dream of becoming a professor in a great citysuch as Carthage, and setting himself up in rivalry to so many celebratedmasters. The best thing he could do, if he did not want to vegetate, was tofall back on some more modest post. Now his protector, Romanianus, wantedhim to go to Thagaste. This rich man had a son almost grown up, whom it wasnecessary to put as soon as possible in the hands of a tutor. Augustin, so often helped by the father, was naturally thought of to look after theyouth. Furthermore, Romanianus, who appreciated Augustin's talent, musthave been anxious to attract him to Thagaste and keep him there. With aneye to the interests of his free-town, he desired to have such a shininglight in the place. So he asked this young man, whom he patronized, toreturn to his native district and open a grammar school. He promisedhim pupils, and, above all, the support of his influence, which wasconsiderable, Monnica, as we may conjecture, added her entreaties to thoseof the great head of the Thagaste municipality. Augustin yielded. Did it grieve him very much to make up his mind to this exile? It must havebeen extremely hard for a young man of twenty to give up Carthage and itspleasures. Moreover, it is pretty nearly certain that at this time he hadalready started that connection which was to last so long. To leave amistress whom he loved, and that in all the freshness of a passion justbeginning--one wonders how he was able to make up his mind to it. And yethe did leave, and spent nearly a year at Thagaste. One peculiar mark of the youth, and even of the whole life of Augustin, isthe ease with which he unlearns and breaks off his habits--the sentimentalas well as the intellectual. He used up a good many doctrines beforeresting in the Catholic truth; and even afterwards, in the course of along life, he contradicted and corrected himself more than once in hiscontroversies and theological writings. His _Retractations_ prove this. Onemight say that the accustomed weighs on him as a hindrance to his liberty;that the look of the places where he lives becomes hateful to him as athreat of servitude. He feels dimly that his true country is elsewhere, andthat if he must settle anywhere it is in the house of his Heavenly Father. _Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. .. . _ "Restless are ourhearts, O my God, until they rest in Thee. " Long before St. Francis ofAssisi, he practised the mystic rule: "As a stranger and a pilgrim. " It istrue that in his twentieth year he was very far from being a mystic. But healready felt that restlessness which made him cross the sea and roam Italyfrom Rome to Milan. He is an impulsive. He cannot resist the mirages of hisheart or his imagination. He is always ready to leave. The road and itschances tempt him. He is eager for the unknown. He lets himself be carriedin delight by the blowing wind. God calls him; he obeys without knowingwhere he goes. This unsettled young man, halting between contrary passions, who feels at home nowhere, has already the soul of an apostle. This changeableness of mood was probably the true cause of his departurefor Thagaste. But other more apparent reasons, reasons more patent to ajuvenile consciousness, guided him also. No doubt he was not sorry toreappear in his little town, although he was so young, with the importanceand authority of a master. His former companions were going to become hispupils. And then the Manichees had fanaticized him. Carried away by theneophyte's bubbling zeal, elevated by his triumphs at the public meetingsin Carthage, he meant to shine before his fellow-countrymen, and perhapsconvert them. He departed with his mind made up to proselytize. Let usbelieve also, that in spite of his dissolute life, and the new passion thatfilled his heart, he did not come back to Thagaste without an affectionatethought at the back of his head for his mother. The reception that Monnica had in reserve for him was going to surprise himconsiderably. Since her widowhood, the wife of Patricius had singularlyadvanced in the way of Christian perfection. The early Church not onlyoffered widows the moral help of its sacraments and consolations, it alsogranted a special dignity with certain privileges to those who made a vowto refrain from sex-intercourse. They had in the basilicas, even as theconsecrated virgins, a place of honour, divided from that of the othermatrons by a balustrade. They wore a special dress. They were obliged toa conduct which would shew them worthy of all the outer marks of respectwhich surrounded them. The austerity of Monnica had increased with the zealof her faith. She set an example to the Church people at Thagaste. Docileto the teachings of her priests, eager to serve her brethren, multiplyingalms as much as she could with her straitened means, she was unfailing atthe services of the Church. Twice daily, morning and evening, she might beseen, exact to the hour of prayer and sermon. She did not go there, her sonassures us, to mingle in cabals and the gossip of pious females, but tohear God's word in homily, and that God might hear her in prayer. The widow compelled all who were about her to the same severe rule whichshe herself observed. In this rigid atmosphere of his home, the studentfrom Carthage, with his free, fashionable airs, must have caused a painfulastonishment. Monnica felt at once that she and her son understood eachother no longer. She began by remonstrating with him. Augustin rebelled. Things got worse when, with his presumption of the young professornew-enamelled by the schools, the harsh and aggressive assurance of theheresiarch, he boasted as loud as he could of being a Manichee. Monnica, deeply wounded in her piety and motherly tenderness, ordered him to give uphis errors. He refused, and only replied by sarcasms to the poor woman'scomplaints. Then she must have believed that the separation was final, thatAugustin had committed an irreparable crime. Being an African Christian, absolute in her faith and passionate for its defence, she regarded herson as a public danger. She was filled with horror at his treason. It ispossible, too, that guided by the second-sight of her affection, she sawclearer into Augustin's heart than he did himself. She was plunged insorrow that he mistook himself to this extent, and refused the Grace whichdesired to win him to the Catholic unity. And as he was not content withlosing himself, but also drew others into peril--disputing, speech-makingbefore his friends, abusing his power of language to throw trouble intoconsciences--Monnica finally made up her mind. She forbade her son to eatat her table, or to sleep under her roof. She drove him from the house. This must have been a big scandal in Thagaste. It does not appear, however, that Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he hadthat kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of thesweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not onlydid he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he didnot trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the livingreality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content if he had talked well and entangled hisadversary in the net of his syllogisms. Put in interdict by Monnica, he simply went and quartered himself onRomanianus. The sumptuous hospitality he received there very soon consoledhim for his exile from his home. And if his self-esteem had been affronted, the pride of living familiarly with so important a personage was, for avain young man, a very full compensation. In fact, this Romanianus roused the admiration of the whole country by hisluxury and lavish expenditure. He was bound to ruin himself in the longrun, or, at any rate, to raise up envious people bent upon his ruin. Beingat the head of the Decurions, he was the protector, not only of Thagaste, but of the neighbouring towns. He was the great patron, the influentialman, who had nearly the whole country for his dependents. The town council, through gratitude and flattery, had had his name engraved upon tables ofbrass, and had put up statues to him. It had even conferred powers on himwider than municipal powers. The truth is that Romanianus did not doleout his benefactions to his fellow-citizens. He gave them bear-fights andother spectacles till then unknown at Thagaste. He did not grudge publicbanquets, and every day a free meal was to be got at his house. The guestswere served plentifully. After having eaten his dinner, they dipped inthe purse of the host. Romanianus knew the art of doing an obliging thingdiscreetly, and even how to anticipate requests which might be painful. Sohe was proclaimed unanimously, "the most humane, the most liberal, the mostpolite and happiest of men. " Generous to his dependents, he did not forget himself. He built a villawhich, by the space it occupied, was a real palace, with _thermæ_ walledin precious marbles. He passed his time in the baths, or gaming, orhunting--in short, he led the life of a great landed proprietor of thosedays. No doubt these villas had neither the beauty nor the art-value of the greatItalian villas, which were a kind of museums in a pretty, or grand, naturalframe; but they did not lack charm. Some of them, like that of Romanianus, were built and decorated at lavish expense. Immensely large, they tookin sometimes an entire village; and sometimes, also, the villa, properlyspeaking, the part of the building where the master dwelt, was fortified, closed in by walls and towers like a feudal castle. Upon the outer gatesand the entrance door might be read in big letters: "The Property ofSo-and-so. " Often, the inscription was repeated upon the walls of anenclosure or of a farm, which really belonged to a dependent of the greatman. Under the shelter of the lord's name, these small-holders defendedthemselves better against fiscal tyranny, or were included in theimmunities of their patrons. So was formed, under the cover of patronage, a sort of African feudalism. Augustin's father, who owned vineyards, wascertainly a vassal of Romanianus. As the African villa was a centre of agricultural activity, it maintainedon the estate a whole population of slaves, workmen, and small-holders. The chief herdsman's house neighboured that of the forester. Throughdeer-parks, enclosed by latticed fences, wandered gazelles. Oil factories, vats and cellars for wine, ran on from the bath-buildings and the offices. Then there was the main building with its immense doorway, its belvedere ofmany stories, as in the Roman villas, its interior galleries, and wings tothe right and left of the _atrium_. In front lay the terraces, the gardenswith straight walks formed by closely-clipped hedges of box which led topools and jets of water, to arbours covered with ivy, to nymph-fountainsornamented with columns and statues. In these gardens was a particularplace called the "philosopher's corner. " The mistress of the house used togo there to read or dream. Her chair, or folding-seat, was placed under theshade of a palm tree. Her "philosopher" followed her, holding her parasoland leading her little favourite dog. It is easy to realize that Augustin managed to stand his mother's severitywithout overmuch distress in one of these fine country houses. To becomfortable there, he had only to follow his natural inclination, whichwas, he tells us, epicureanism. It is most certain that at this periodthe only thing he cared about and sought after was pleasure. Stayingwith Romanianus, he took his share in all the pleasant things of life, _suavitates illius vitæ_--shared the amusements of his host, and onlybothered about his pupils when he had nothing better to do. He must havebeen as little of a grammarian as possible--he hadn't the time. Withthe tyrannical friendship of rich people, who are hard put to it tofind occupation, Romanianus doubtless monopolized him from morning tillnight. They hunted together, or dined, or read poetry, or discussed inthe evergreen alleys of the garden or "the philosopher's corner. " Andnaturally, the recent convert to Manicheeism did his best to indoctrinateand convert his patron--so far at least as a careless man like Romanianuscould be converted. Augustin accuses himself of having "flung" Romanianusinto his own errors. Augustin probably was not so guilty. His wealthyfriend does not seem to have had any very firm convictions. In alllikelihood, he was a pagan, a sceptical or hesitating pagan, suchas existed in numbers at that time. Led by Augustin, he drew near toManicheeism. Then, when Augustin gave up Manicheeism for Platonicphilosophy, we see Romanianus take the airs of a philosopher. Later, whenAugustin came back to Catholicism, he drew Romanianus in his wake towardsthat religion. This man of fashion was one of those frivolous people whonever go deep into things, for whom ideas are only a pastime, and whoconsider philosophers or men of letters as amusers. But it is certainthat he liked to listen to Augustin, and let himself be influenced. If hetrifled with Manicheeism, the reason was that Augustin dazzled him with hisarguments and fine phrases. This orator of twenty had already extraordinarycharm. So Augustin led a delightful life with Romanianus. Everything pleasedhim--his talking triumphs, the admiration of his hearers, the flatteryand luxury which surrounded him. Meanwhile, Monnica was plunged in griefat his conduct, and implored God to draw him from his errors. She beganto be sorry that she had sent him away, and with the clear-sightedness ofthe Christian, she perceived that Romanianus' house was not good for theprodigal. It would be better to have him back. Near her he would run lessrisk of being corrupted. Through intense praying, came to her a dreamwhich quickened her determination. "She dreamed that she was weeping andlamenting, with her feet planted on a wooden rule, when she saw comingtowards her a radiant youth who smiled upon her cheerfully. He asked thereason of her sorrow and her daily tears . .. And when she told him she wasbewailing my perdition, he bade her be of good comfort, look and see, forwhere she was, there was I also. She looked, and saw me standing by herside on the same rule. " Filled with joy by this promise from on high, Monnica asked her son tocome home. He did come back, but with the quibbles of the Sophist, therhetorician cavilled against his mother. He tried to upset her happiness. He said to her: "Since, according to your dream, we are to be both standing on the samerule, that means that you are going to be a Manichean. " "No, " answered Monnica. "_He_ did not say, where he is you will be, butwhere you are he will be. " Augustin confesses that this strong good sense made a certain impressionon him. Nevertheless he did not change. For still nine years he remained aManichee. As a last resource, Monnica begged a bishop she knew, a man deeply read inthe Scriptures, to speak with her son and refute his errors. But so greatwas the reputation of Augustin as an orator and dialectician that the holyman dared not try a fall with such a vigorous jouster. He answered themother very wisely, that a mind so subtle and acute could not long continuein such gross sophisms. And he offered his own example, for he, too, hadbeen a Manichee. But Monnica pressed him with entreaties and tears. At lastthe bishop, annoyed by her persistence, but at the same time moved by hertears, answered with a roughness mingled with kindness and compassion: "Go, go! Leave me alone. Live on as you are living. It cannot be that theson of such tears should be lost. " _Filius istarum lacrymarum_: the son of such tears!. .. Was it indeed thecountry bishop, or rather the rhetorician Augustin who, in a burst ofgratitude, hit upon this sublime sentence? Certain it is that later onAugustin saw in his mother's tears as it were a first baptism whence hecame forth regenerate. After having borne him according to the flesh, Monnica, by her tears and moans, gave him birth into the spiritual life. Monnica wept because of Augustin. Monnica wept for Augustin. This is ratherastonishing in the case of so severe a mother--this African a triflerough. The expressions--tears and moans and weeping--occur so often inher son's writings, that we are at first tempted to take them for piousmetaphors--figures of a sacred rhetoric. We suspect that Monnica's tearsmust come from the Bible, an imitation of King David's penitential tears. But it would be quite an error to believe that. Monnica wept real tears. In her whole-hearted prayers she bedewed the pavement of the basilica; shemoistened the balustrade against which she leant her forehead. This austerewoman, this widow whose face nobody saw any more, whose body was shapelessby reason of the mass of stuffs, grey and black, which wrapped her fromhead to foot--this rigid Christian concealed a heart full of love. Lovesuch as this was then a perfectly new thing. That an African woman should carry her piety to the point of fanaticism;that she should work to conquer her son to her faith; that, if he strayedfrom it, she should hate him and drive him out with curses--this has beenseen in Africa at all times. But that a mother should mourn at the thoughtthat her child is lost for another life; that she grows terror-stricken anddespairing when she thinks that she may possess a happiness in which hewill have no part, and walk in the gardens of Heaven while her child willnot be there--no, this had never been seen before. "Where I am you willbe, " near me, against my heart, our two hearts meeting in the one samelove--in this union of souls, continued beyond the grave, lies all theChristian sweetness and hope. Augustin was no longer, or not yet, a Christian. But in his tears he isthe true son of his mother. This gift of tears that Saint Lewis of Francebegged God with so much earnestness and contrition to grant him, Monnica'sson had to the full. "For him to weep was a pleasure. " [1] He inebriatedhimself with his tears. Now, just while he was at Thagaste, he lost afriend whom he loved intensely. This death set free the fountain of tears. They are not yet the holy tears which he will shed later before God, butonly poor human tears, more pathetic perhaps to our own weakness. [Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve. ] Who was this friend? He tells us in very vague terms. We only know thatthey had grown up as boys together and had gone to the same schools; thatthey had just passed a year together, probably at Carthage; that this youngman, persuaded by him, was become a Manichee; and that, in a word, theyloved passionately. Augustin, while speaking of him, recalls in a deepersense what Horace said of his friend Virgil: _dimidium animæ_--"O thou halfof my soul!" Well, this young man fell gravely sick of a fever. As all hope was at anend, they baptized him, according to the custom. He grew better, was almostcured, "As soon as I was able to talk to him, " says Augustin--"and that wasas soon as he could bear it, for I never left his side, and we were boundup in one another--I ventured a jest, thinking that he would jest too, about the baptism which he had received, when he could neither think norfeel. But by this time he had been told of his baptism. He shrank fromme as from an enemy, and with a wonderful new-found courage, warned menever to speak so to him again, if I wished to remain his friend. I wasso astounded and confused that I said no more, resolving to wait tillhe should regain his strength, _when I would tell him frankly what Ithought_. " So, at this serious moment, he whom they called "the Carthaginian disputer"was sorry not to be able to measure himself in a bout of dialectics withhis half-dead friend. The intellectual poison had so perverted his mind, that it almost destroyed in him the feelings of common decency. But if hishead, as he acknowledges, was very much spoiled, his heart remained intact. His friend died a few days after, and Augustin was not there. He wasstunned by it. His grief wrought itself up to wildness and despair. "This sorrow fell likedarkness on my heart, and wherever I looked I saw nothing but death. Mycountry became a torture, my father's house a misery. All the pleasuresthat I had shared with him, turned into hideous anguish now that he wasgone. My eyes sought for him everywhere, and found him not. I hated thefamiliar scenes because he was not there, and they could no more cry tome, 'Lo! he will come. ' as they used when he was absent but alive. .. . "Then Augustin began to weep louder, he prolonged his weeping, findingconsolation only in tears. Monnica's tenderness was restrained; in him itwas given full vent and exaggerated. At that time, the Christian moderationwas unknown to him, as well as the measure which the good taste of theancients prompted. He has often been compared to the most touchinggeniuses, to Virgil, to Racine, who had also the gift of tears. ButAugustin's tenderness is more abandoned, and, so to speak, more romantic. It even works up, sometimes, into an unhealthy excitement. To be full of feeling, as Augustin was then, is not only to feel withexcessive sensitiveness the least wounds, the slightest touches of love orhate, nor is it only to give oneself with transport; but it is especiallyto take delight in the gift of oneself, to feel at the moment of fullabandonment that one is communicating with something infinitely sweet, which already has ceased to be the creature loved. It is love for love, itis to weep for the pleasure of tears, it is to mix with tenderness a kindof egoism avid of experiences. Having lost his friend, Augustin loathes allthe world. He repeats: "Tears were my only comfort. I was wretched, andmy wretchedness was dear to me. " And accordingly, he did not want to beconsoled. But as, little by little, the terrors of that parting subsided, he perceived himself that he played with grief and made a joy of histears. "My tears, " he says, "were dearer to me than my friend had been. "By degrees the friend is almost forgotten. Though Augustin may hate lifebecause his friend has gone, he confesses naively that he would not havesacrificed his existence for the sake of the dead. He surmises that whatis told of Orestes and Pylades contending to die for each other is but afable. Ultimately, he comes to write: "Perhaps I feared to die, _lest theother half of him whom I had loved so dearly, should perish_. " He himself, in his _Retractations_, condemns this phrase as pure rhetoric. It remainstrue that what was perhaps the deepest sorrow of his life--this sorrow sosincere and painful which had "rent and bloodied his soul"--ended with astriking phrase. It should be added, that in a stormy nature like his, grief, like love, wears itself out quickly. It burns up passion and sentiment as it doesideas. When at length he regained his calm, everything appeared drab. Thagaste became intolerable. With his impulsive temperament, his changeablehumour, he all at once hit upon a plan: To go back to Carthage and open arhetoric school. Perhaps, too, the woman he loved and had abandoned therewas pressing him to return. Perhaps she told him that she was about tobecome a mother. Always ready to go away, Augustin scarcely hesitated. It is more than likely that he did not consult Monnica. He only toldRomanianus, who, as he had all kinds of reasons for wanting to keepAugustin at Thagaste, at first strongly objected. But the young man pointedto his future, his ambition to win fame. Was he going to bury all that in alittle town? Romanianus yielded, and with a generosity that is no longer seen, he paidthe expenses this time too. V THE SILENCE OF GOD Augustin was going to live nine years at Carthage--nine years that hesquandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himselfand others--briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "Andduring this time Thou wert silent, O my God!" he cries, in recalling onlythe faults of his early youth. Now, the silence of God lay heavy. And yeteven in those years his tormented soul had not ceased to appeal. "Wherewert Thou then, O my God, while I looked for Thee? Thou wert before me. ButI had drawn away from myself and I could not find myself. How much less, then, could I find Thee. " This was certainly the most uneasy, and, at moments, the most painful timeof his life. Hardly was he got back to Carthage than he had to struggleagainst ever-increasing money difficulties. Not only had he to get hisown living, but the living of others--possibly his mother's and that ofhis brother and sister--at all events, he had to support his mistress andthe child. It is possible that the infant was born before its father leftThagaste; if not, the birth must have occurred shortly after. The child was called Adeodatus. There is a kind of irony in this name, which was then usual, of Adeodatus--"Gift of God. " This son of his sin, asAugustin calls him, this son whom he did not want, and the news of whosebirth must have been a painful shock--this poor child was a gift of Heavenwhich the father could have well done without. And then, when he saw him, he was filled with joy, and he cherished him as a real gift from God. He accepted his fatherhood courageously, and, as it happens in suchcases, he was drawn closer to his mistress, their association taking onsomething of conjugal dignity. Did the mother of Adeodatus justify suchattachment--an attachment which was to last more than ten years? Themystery in which Augustin intended that the woman he had loved the mostshould remain enveloped for all time, is nearly impenetrable to us. Nodoubt she was of a very humble, not to say low class, since Monnica judgedit impossible to bring about a marriage between the ill-assorted pair. There must have been an extreme inequality between the birth and educationof the lovers. This did not prevent Augustin from loving his mistresspassionately, for her beauty perhaps, or perhaps for her goodness of heart, or both. Nevertheless, it is surprising, that in view of his changinghumour, and his prompt and impressionable soul, he remained faithful toher so long. What was to prevent his taking his son and going off? Ancientcustom authorized such an act. But Augustin was tender-hearted. He wasafraid to cause pain; he dreaded for others the wounds that caused him somuch suffering himself. So he stayed on from kindness, from pity, habittoo, and also because, in spite of everything, he loved the mother of hischild. Up to the time of his conversion, they lived like husband and wife. So now, to keep his family, he really turns "a dealer in words. " In spiteof his youth (he was barely twenty) the terms he had kept at Thagaste asa teacher of grammar allowed him to take his place among the rhetoriciansat Carthage. Thanks to Romanianus, he got pupils at once. His protector atThagaste sent his son, that young Licentius whose education Augustin hadalready begun, with one of his brothers, doubtless younger. It seems likelythat the two youths lived in Augustin's house. A small fact which theirmaster has preserved, looks like a proof of this. A spoon having been lostin the house, Augustin, to find out where it was, told Licentius to goand consult a wizard, one Albicerius, who had, just then, a great name inCarthage. This message is scarcely to be explained unless we suppose thelad was lodging in his professor's house. Another of the pupils is known tous. This is Eulogius, who was later on a rhetorician at Carthage, and ofwhom Augustin relates an extraordinary dream. Finally, there was Alypius, a little younger than himself, his friend--"the brother of his heart, " ashe calls him. Alypius had been attending his lessons at Thagaste. When theschoolmaster abruptly threw up his employment, the father of the pupilwas angry, and in sending his son to Carthage, he forbade him to go nearAugustin's class. But it was difficult to keep such eager friends apart. Little by little, Alypius overcame his father's objections, and became apupil of his friend. Augustin's knowledge, when he began to lecture, could not have been verydeep, for he had only lately quitted the student's bench himself. Hisduties forced him to learn what he did not know. In teaching he taughthimself. It was at this time that he did most of the reading whichafterwards added substance to his polemics and treatises. He tells ushimself that he read in those days all that he could lay hands on. He isvery proud of having read by himself and understood without any assistancefrom a master, the _Ten Categories_ of Aristotle, which was considered oneof the most abstruse works of the Stagirite. In an age when instruction wasprincipally by word of mouth, and books comparatively rare, it is obviousthat Augustin was not what we call an "all-devouring reader. " We do notknow if Carthage had many libraries, or what the libraries were worth. Itis no less true that the author of _The City of God_ is the last of theLatin writers who had a really all-round knowledge. It is he who is thelink between modern times and pagan antiquity. The Middle Age hardly knewclassical literature, save by the allusions and quotations of Augustin. So in spite of family and professional cares, he did not lose hisintellectual proclivities. The conquest of truth remained always his greatambition. He still hoped to find it in Manicheeism, but he began to thinkthat it was a long time coming. The leaders of the sect could not havetrusted him thoroughly. They feared his acute and subtle mind, so quickto detect the flaw in a thesis or argument. That is why they postponedhis initiation into their secret doctrines. Augustin remained a simple_auditor_ in their Church. By way of appeasing the enormous activity ofhis intelligence, they turned him on to controversy, and the criticaldiscussion of the Scriptures. Giving themselves out for Christians, theyadopted a part of them, and flung aside as interpolated or forged all thatwas not in tune with their theology. Augustin, as we know, triumphed indisputes of this kind, and was vain because he excelled in them. And when he grew tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangeliststo give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrinecalculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophicalcolouring. The catechumen was not satisfied, but he put up with it forlack of anything better. Very prettily he compares these enemies of theScriptures to the snarers of birds, who defile or fill with earth all thewater-places where the birds use to drink, save one mere; and about thisthey set their snares. The birds all fly there, not because the wateris better, but because there is no other water, and they know not whereelse to go and drink. So Augustin, not knowing where to quench his thirstfor truth, was fain to make the best of the confused pantheism of theManichees. What remains noteworthy is, that however unstable his own convictions were, he yet converted everybody about him. It was through him that his friendsbecame Manichees: Alypius one of the first; then Nebridius, the son of agreat landowner near Carthage; Honoratius, Marcianus; perhaps, too, theyoungest of his pupils, Licentius and his brother--all victims of hispersuasive tongue, which he exerted later on to draw them back from theirerrors. So great was his charm--so deep, especially, was public credulity! This fourth century was no longer a century of strong Christian faith. Onthe other hand, the last agony of paganism was marked by a new attack ofthe lowest credulity and superstition. As the Church energetically combatedboth one and the other, it is not surprising that it was chiefly thepagans who were contaminated. The old religion was to end by foundering inmagic. The greatest minds of the period, the neo-Platonists, the EmperorJulian himself, were miracle-workers, or at any rate, adepts in the occultsciences. Augustin, who was then separated from Christianity, followed thegeneral impulse, together with the young men he knew. Just now we saw himsending to consult the soothsayer, Albicerius, about the loss of a spoon. And this man of intellect believed also in astrologers and nigromancers. Strips of lead have been found at Carthage upon which are written magicspells against horses entered for races in the circus. Just like theCarthaginian jockeys, Augustin had recourse to these hidden and fraudulentpractices, to make sure of success. On the eve of a verse competition inthe theatre, he fell in with a wizard who offered, if they could agreeabout the price, to sacrifice a certain number of animals to buy thevictory. Upon this, Augustin, very much annoyed, declared that if the prizewere a crown of immortal gold, not a fly should be sacrificed to help himwin it. Really, magic was repellent to the honesty of his mind, as wellas to his nerves, by reason of the suspicious and brutal part of itsoperations. As a rule, it was involved with haruspicy, and had a side ofsacred anatomy and the kitchen which revolted the sensitive--dissectionof flesh, inspection of entrails, not to mention the slaughtering andstrangling of victims. Fanatics, such as Julian, gave themselves up withdelight to these disgusting manipulations. What we know of Augustin's soulmakes it quite clear why he recoiled with horror. Astrology, on the contrary, attracted him by its apparent science. Itsadepts called themselves "mathematicians, " and thus seemed to borrow fromthe exact sciences something of their solidity. Augustin often discussedastrology with a Carthage physician, Vindicianus, a man of great senseand wide learning, who even reached Proconsular honours. In vain did hepoint out to the young rhetorician that the pretended prophecies of themathematicians were the effect of chance; in vain did Nebridius, lesscredulous than his friend, join his arguments to those of the craftyphysician; Augustin clung obstinately to his chimera. His dialectical minddiscovered ingenious justifications for what the astrologers claimed. Thus, dazzled by all the intellectual phantasms, he strayed from onescience to another, repeating meanwhile in his heart the motto of hisManichean masters: "The Truth, the Truth!". But whatever might be theattractions of the speculative life, he had first to face the needs ofactual life. The sight of his child called him back to a sense of hisposition. To get money, and for that purpose to push himself forward, puthimself in evidence, increase his reputation--Augustin worked at that ashard as he could. It led him to enter for the prize of dramatic poetry. He was declared the winner. His old friend, the physician Vindicianus, whowas then Proconsul, placed the crown, as he says, upon his "disorderedhead. " The future Father of the Church writing for the theatre--and what atheatre it was then!--is not the least extraordinary thing in this life sodisturbed and, at first sight, so contradictory. It was also from literary ambition that about the same time he wrote a bookon æsthetics called _Upon the Beautiful and the Fit_, which he dedicated toa famous colleague, the Syrian Hierius, "orator to the City of Rome, " oneof the professors of the official education appointed either by the Romanmunicipality or the Imperial treasury. This Levantine rhetorician had animmense success in the capital of the Empire. His renown had got beyondacademical and fashionable circles and crossed the sea. Augustin admiredhim on trust, like everybody else. It is clear that, at this time he couldnot imagine a more glorious fortune for himself than to become, likeHierius, orator to the City of Rome. Later in life, the Bishop of Hippo, while condemning the vanity of his youthful ambitions, must have made someextremely ironical reflections as to their modesty. How mistaken he wasabout himself! An Augustin had dreamed of equalling one day this obscurepedagogue, of whom nobody, save for him, would ever have spoken again. Menof instinct, like Augustin, continually go wrong in this way about theirobject and the means to employ. But their mistakes are only in appearance. A will stronger than their own leads them, by mysterious ways, whither theyought to go. This first book of Augustin's is lost, and we are unable to say whetherthere be any reason to regret it. He himself recalls it to us in a veryindifferent tone and rather vague terms. It would seem, however, that hisæsthetic had a basis of Manichean metaphysics. But what is significant forus, in this youthful essay, is that the first time Augustin wrote as anauthor it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at leastnot directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is alreadyinclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be areligion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identicalwith the supreme Love. "Do we love anything, " he used to say to hisfriends, "except what is beautiful?" _Num amamus aliquid, nisi pulchrum?_Again, at the end of his life, when he strives in _The City of God_ tomake clear for us the dogma of the resurrection of the body, he thinks ourbodies shall rise free from all earthly flaws, in all the splendour of theperfect human type. Nothing of the body will be lost. It will keep all itslimbs and all its organs _because they are beautiful_. One recognizes inthis passage, not only the Platonist, but the traveller and art-lover, whohad gazed upon some of the finest specimens of ancient statuary. This first book had hardly any success. Augustin does not even say whetherthe celebrated Hierius paid him a compliment about it, and he has an airof giving us to understand that he had no other admirer but himself. Newdisappointments, more serious mortifications, changed little by little hisstate of mind and his plans for the future. He was obliged to acknowledgethat after years of effort he was scarcely more advanced than at the start. There was no chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quiteplain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now, why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he hadnot the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of allfor a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and selectaudience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes hecould not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularlydifficult to keep in order, because the students were more rowdy thanelsewhere. At any moment "The Wreckers" might burst in and make a row. Augustin, who had not joined in these "rags" when he was a student, sawhimself obliged to endure them as a professor. He had nothing worse tocomplain of than his fellow-professors, in whose classes the same kind ofdisturbance took place. That was the custom and, in a manner of speaking, the rule in the Carthage schools. For all that, a little more authoritativebearing would not have harmed him in the eyes of these disorderly boys. Buthe had still graver defects for a professor who wants to get on: he was nota schemer, and he could not make the most of himself. It is quite possible that he did not possess the qualities which just thenpleased the pagan public in a rhetorician. The importance that the ancientsattached to physical advantages in an orator is well known. Now, accordingto an old tradition, Augustin was a little man and not strong: till the endof his life he complained of his health. He had a weak voice, a delicatechest, and was often hoarse. Surely this injured him before audiences usedto all the outward emphasis and all the studied graces of Roman eloquence. Finally, his written and spoken language had none of those brilliant andingenious curiosities of phrase which pleased in literary and fashionablecircles. This inexhaustibly prolific writer is not in the least a stylist. In this respect he is inferior to Apuleius, or Tertullian, though he leavesthem far behind in the qualities of sincere and deep sentiment, poeticflow, colour, the vividness of metaphor, and, besides, the emotion, thesuavity of the tone. With all that, no matter how hard he tried, he couldnever grasp what the rhetoricians of his time understood by style. This iswhy his writings, as well as his addresses, were not very much liked. Nevertheless, good judges recognized his value, and guessed the powers, lying still unformed within him, which he was misusing ere they weremature. He was received at the house of the Proconsul Vindicianus, wholiked to talk with him, and treated him with quite fatherly kindness. Augustin knew people in the best society. He did all his life. His charmand captivating manners made him welcome in the most exclusive circles. But just because he was valued by fashionable society, it came home to himmore painfully that he had not the position he deserved with the publicat large. Little by little his humour grew bitter. In this angry state ofmind he was no longer able to consider things with the same confidence andserenity. His mental disquietudes took hold of him again. His ideas were affected, first of all. He began to have doubts, moreand more definite, about Manicheeism. He began by suspecting the rathertheatrical austerity which the initiated of the sect made such a greatparade of. Among other turpitudes, he saw one day in one of the busiestparts of Carthage "three of the Elect whinny after some women or other whowere passing, and begin making such obscene signs that they surpassed thecoarsest people for impudence and shamelessness. " He was scandalized atthat; but, after all, it was a small thing. He himself was not so veryvirtuous then. Generally your intellectual worries very little aboutsquaring his conduct with his principles, and does not bother about thepractical part. No; what was much worse in his eyes is that the Manicheanphysical science, a congeries of fables more or less symbolical, suddenlystruck him as ruinous. He had just been studying astronomy, and he foundthat the cosmology of the Manichees--of these men who called themselvesmaterialists--did not agree with scientific facts. Therefore Manicheeismmust be wrong universally, since it ran counter to reason confirmed byexperience. Augustin spoke about his doubts, not only to his friends, but to thepriests of his sect. These got out of the difficulty by evasions and themost dazzling promises. A Manichee bishop, a certain Faustus, was comingto Carthage. He was a man of immense learning. Most certainly he wouldrefute every objection without the least trouble. He would confirm theyoung _auditors_ in their faith. .. . So Augustin and his friends waited forFaustus as for a Messiah. Their disappointment was immense. The supposeddoctor turned out to be an ignorant man, who possessed no tincture ofscience or philosophy, and whose intellectual baggage consisted of nothingbut a little grammar. A delightful talker and a wit, the most he could dowas to discourse pleasantly on literature. This disappointment, joined to the set-backs in his profession, broughtabout a crisis of soul and conscience in Augustin. So this Truth which hehad sighed after so long, which had been so much promised to him, was onlya decoy! One must be content not to know!. .. Then what was left to do sincetruth was unapproachable? Possibly fortune and honours would console himfor it. But he was far enough from them too. He felt that he was on thewrong road, that he was getting into a rut at Carthage, as he had got intoa rut at Thagaste. He must succeed, whatever the cost!. .. And then he gaveway to one of those moments of weariness, when a man has no further hope ofsaving himself save by some desperate step. He was sick of where he was andof those about him. His friends, whom he knew too well, had nothing moreto teach him, and could not help him in the only search which passionatelyinterested him. And his entanglement became irksome. Here was nine yearsthat this sharing of bed and board had lasted. His son was at thatunattractive age which rather bores a young father than it revives anaffection already old. No doubt he did not want to abandon him. He did notintend to break altogether with his mistress. But he felt the need of achange of air, to take himself off somewhere else, where he could breathemore freely and get fresh courage for his task. Then it dawned on him to try his fortune at Rome. It was there thatliterary reputations were made. He would find there, no doubt, betterjudges than at Carthage. He would very likely end by getting a post in thepublic instruction, with a steady salary--this would relieve him of presentworries, at all events. Probably he had already this plan in his head whenhe sent his treatise _On the Beautiful_ to Hierius, orator to the City ofRome; he thought that by this politeness he might depend, later, on thebacking of the well-known rhetorician. Lastly, his friends, Honoratius, Marcianus, and the others, earnestly persuaded him to go and find a stageworthy of him at Rome. Alypius, who was at this time finishing his lawstudies there, and must have felt their separation, pressed him to come toRome and promised him success. Once more, Augustin was ready to go away. He was not long in making up hismind. He was going to leave all belonging to him, his mistress, his child, till the time when his new position would enable him to send for them. Hehimself tells us that the chief motive which led him to decide on thisjourney was that the Roman students were said to be better disciplinedand less noisy than the students at Carthage. Evidently, that is a reasonwhich would weigh with a professor who objected to act the policeman in hisclass. But besides the reasons we have given, there were others which musthave influenced his decision. Theodosius had lately ordered very heavypenalties against the Manichees. Not only did he condemn them to death, buthe had instituted a perfect Inquisition, with the special duty of spyingupon and prosecuting these heretics. Did it occur to Augustin that he mighthide better in Rome, where he was unknown, than in a city where he was amarked man on account of his proselytizing zeal? In any case, his departuregave rise to calumnies which his adversaries, the Donatists, did notfail many years later to bring up again and make worse. They accused himof having run away from prosecution; he fled the country, so they said, on account of a judgment which was out against him, pronounced by theProconsul Messianus. Augustin had no trouble in refuting these falseinsinuations. But all these facts seem to prove that the most ordinaryprudence warned him to cross the sea as soon as possible. Accordingly, he prepared to set sail. Let us hope that in spite of hislofty indifference to material things, he made some provision for theexistence of the woman and child he left behind. As for her, she appearedto agree without over-many violent scenes to this parting, which, he said, was temporary. It was not the same with his mother. The very idea of Rome, which seemed to her another Babylon, terrified this austere African woman. What spiritual dangers lay in wait for her son there! She wanted to keephim near her, both to bring him to the faith and also to love him--thisAugustin who had been her only human love. And then he was doubtless thechief support of the widow. Without him, what was going to become of her? The fugitive was forced to put a trick on Monnica so as to carry out hisplan. She would not leave him a moment, folded him in her arms, imploredhim with tears not to go. The night he was to sail she followed him down tothe dock, although Augustin, to allay her suspicions, had told her a lie. He pretended that he was only going down to the ship with a friend to seehim off. But Monnica, only half believing, followed. Night fell. Meanwhile, the ship, anchored in a little bay to the north of the city, did not move. The sailors were waiting till a wind rose to slip their moorings. Theweather was moist and oppressive, as it usually is in the Mediterranean inAugust and September. There was not a breath of air. The hours passed on. Monnica, overcome by heat and fatigue, could hardly stand. Then Augustincunningly persuaded her to go and pass the night in a chapel hard by, sinceit was plain that the ship would not weigh anchor till dawn. After manyremonstrances, she at length agreed to rest in this chapel--a _memoria_consecrated to St. Cyprian, the great martyr and patron of Carthage. Like most of the African sanctuaries of those days, and the _marabouts_of to-day, this one must have been either surrounded, or approached, by acourt with a portico in arcades, where it was possible to sleep. Monnicasat down on the ground under her heap of veils among other poor people andtravellers, who were come like her to try to find a little cool air on thisstifling night near the relics of the blessed Cyprian. She prayed for herchild, offering to God "the blood of her heart, " begging God not to lethim go, "for she loved to keep me with her" says Augustin, "as mothers arewont, yes, far more than most mothers. " And like a true daughter of Eve, "weeping and crying, she sought again with groans the son she had broughtforth with groans. " She prayed for a long time; then, worn out with sorrow, she slept. The porter of the chapel, without knowing it, watched thatnight not only the mother of the rhetorician Augustin, but the ancestorof an innumerable line of souls; this humble woman, who slept there onthe ground, on the flags of the courtyard, carried in her heart all theyearning of all the mothers of the future. While she slept, Augustin went stealthily on board. The silence and thetempered splendour of the night weighed him down. Sometimes the cry of thesailors on watch took a strange note in the lustrous vaporous spaces. TheGulf of Carthage gleamed far off under the scintillation of the stars, under the palpitating of a milky way all white like the flowers of thegarden of Heaven. But Augustin's heart was heavy, heavier than the airweighted by the heat and sea-damp--heavy from the lie and the cruelty hehad just committed. He saw already the awakening and sorrow of his mother. His conscience was troubled, overcome by remorse and forebodings. .. . Meanwhile, his friends tried to cheer him, and urged him to have courageand hope. Marcianus, while embracing him, reminded him of the verses ofTerence: "This day which brings to thee another life Demands that thou another man shalt be. " Augustin smiled sadly. At last the ship began to move. The wind had risen, the wind of the grand voyage which was bearing him to the unknown. .. . Suddenly, at the keen freshness of the open sea, he thrilled. His strengthand confidence rushed back. To go away! What enchantment for all those whocannot fasten themselves to a corner of the earth, who know by instinctthat they belong _elsewhere_, who always pass "as strangers and aspilgrims, " and who go away with relief, as if they cast a burthen behindthem. Augustin was of those people--of those who, among the fairestattractions of the Road, never cease to think of the Return. But he knewnot where God was leading him. Marcianus was right: a new life was reallybeginning for him; only it was not the life that either of them hoped for. He who departed as a rhetorician, to sell words, was to come back as anapostle, to conquer souls. THE THIRD PART THE RETURN Et ecce ibi es in corde eorum, in corde confitentium tibi, et projicientium se in te, et plorantium in sinu tuo, post vias suas difficiles. "And behold! Thou art there in their hearts, in the hearts of that confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon Thee, and sob upon Thy breast, after their weary ways. " _Confessions_, V, 2. I THE CITY OF GOLD Augustin fell ill just after he got to Rome. It would seem that he arrivedthere towards the end of August or beginning of September, before thestudents reassembled, just at the time of heat and fevers, when all Romanswho could leave the city fled to the summer resorts on the coast. Like all the great cosmopolitan centres at that time, Rome was unhealthy. The diseases of the whole earth, brought by the continual inflow offoreigners, flourished there. Accordingly, the inhabitants had a panic fearof infection, like our own contemporaries. People withdrew prudently fromthose suffering from infectious disorders, who were left to their unhappyfate. If, from a sense of shame, they sent a slave to the patient'sbedside, he was ordered to the sweating-rooms, and there disinfected fromhead to foot, before he could enter the house again. Augustin must have had at least the good luck to be well looked after, since he recovered. He had gone to the dwelling of one of his Manicheebrethren, an _auditor_ like himself, and an excellent kind of man, whom hestayed with all the time he was in Rome. Still, he had such a bad attack offever that he very nearly died. "I was perishing, " he says; "and I was allbut lost. " He is frightened at the idea of having seen death so near, at amoment when he was so far from God--so far, in fact, that it never occurredto him to ask for baptism, as he had done, in like case, when he waslittle. What a desperate blow would that have been for Monnica! He stillshudders when he recalls the danger: "Had my mother's heart been smittenwith that wound, it never could have been healed. _For I cannot expressher tender love towards me_, or with how far greater anguish she travailedof me now in the spirit, than when she bore me in the flesh. " But Monnicaprayed. Augustin was saved. He ascribes his recovery to the fervent prayersof his mother, who, in begging of God the welfare of his soul, obtained, without knowing it, the welfare of his body. As soon as he was convalescent, he had to set to work to get pupils. He wasobliged to ask the favours of many an important personage, to knock at manyan inhospitable door. This unfortunate beginning, the almost mortal illnesswhich he was only just recovering from, this forced drudgery--all that didnot make him very fond of Rome. It seems quite plain that he never likedit, and till the end of his life he kept a grudge against it for the sorryreception it gave him. In the whole body of his writings it is impossibleto find a word of praise for the beauty of the Eternal City, while, onthe contrary, one can make out through his invectives against the vicesof Carthage, his secret partiality for the African Rome. The old rivalrybetween the two cities was not yet dead after so many centuries. Inhis heart, Augustin, like a good Carthaginian--and because he was aCarthaginian--did not like Rome. The most annoying things joined together as if on purpose to disgust himwith it. The bad season of the year was nigh when he began to reside there. Autumn rains had started, and the mornings and evenings were cold. Whatwith his delicate chest, and his African constitution sensitive to cold, he must have suffered from this damp cold climate. Rome seemed to him anorthern city. With his eyes still full of the warm light of his country, and the joyous whiteness of the Carthage streets, he wandered as one exiledbetween the gloomy Roman palaces, saddened by the grey walls and muddypavements. Comparisons, involuntary and continual, between Carthage andRome, made him unjust to Rome. In his eyes it had a hard, self-conscious, declamatory look, and gazing at the barren Roman _campagna_, he rememberedthe laughing Carthage suburbs, with gardens, villas, vineyards, olivets, circled everywhere by the brilliance of the sea and the lagoons. And then, besides, Rome could not be a very delightful place to live in fora poor rhetoric master come there to better his fortune. Other strangersbefore him had complained of it. Always to be going up and down the flightsof steps and the ascents, often very steep, of the city of the Seven Hills;to be rushing between the Aventine and Sallust's garden, and thence tothe Esquiline and Janiculum! To bruise the feet on the pointed cobbles ofsloping alley-ways! These walks were exhausting, and there seemed to be noend to this city. Carthage was also large--as large almost as Rome. Butthere Augustin was not seeking employment. When he went for a walk there, he strolled. Here, the bustle of the crowds, and the number of equipages, disturbed and exasperated the southerner with his lounging habits. Anymoment there was a risk of being run over by cars tearing at full gallopthrough the narrow streets: men of fashion just then had a craze fordriving fast. Or again, the passenger was obliged to step aside sothat some lady might go by in her litter, escorted by her household, from the handicraft slaves and the kitchen staff, to the eunuchs andhouse-servants--all this army manoeuvring under the orders of a leader whoheld a rod in his hand, the sign of his office. When the street becameclear once more, and at last the palace of the influential personageto whom a visit had to be paid was reached, there was no admittancewithout greasing the knocker. In order to be presented to the master, it was necessary to buy the good graces of the slave who took the name(_nomenclator_), and who not only introduced the suppliant, but might, witha word, recommend or injure. Even after all these precautions, one was notyet sure of the goodwill of the patron. Some of these great lords, who werenot always themselves sprung from old Roman families, prided themselvesupon their uncompromising nationalism, and made a point of treatingforeigners with considerable haughtiness. The Africans were regardedunfavourably in Rome, especially in Catholic circles. Augustin must havehad an unpleasant experience of this. Through the long streets, brilliantly lighted at evening (it would seemthat the artificial lighting of Rome almost equalled the daylight), hewould return tired out to the dwelling of his host, the Manichee. Thisdwelling, according to an old tradition, was in the Velabrum district, ina street which is still to-day called _Via Greca_, and skirts the very oldchurch of Santa Maria-in-Cosmedina--a poor quarter where swarmed a filthymass of Orientals, and where the immigrants from the Levantine countries, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Egyptians, lodged. The warehouses on the Tiberwere not very far off, and no doubt there were numbers of labourers, porters, and watermen living in this neighbourhood. What a place forhim who had been at Thagaste the guest of the magnificent Romanianus, and intimate with the Proconsul at Carthage! When he had climbed up thesix flights of stairs to his lodging, and crouched shivering over theill-burning movable hearth, in the parsimonious light of a small bronze orearthenware lamp, while the raw damp sweated through the walls, he feltmore and more his poverty and loneliness. He hated Rome and the stupidambition which had brought him there. And yet Rome should have made a vividappeal to this cultured man, this æsthete so alive to beauty. Although thetransfer of the Court to Milan had drawn away some of its liveliness andglitter, it was still all illuminated by its grand memories, and never hadit been more beautiful. It seems impossible that Augustin should not havebeen struck by it, despite his African prejudices. However well built thenew Carthage might be, it could not pretend to compare with a city morethan a thousand years old, which at all periods of its history hadmaintained the princely taste for building, and which a long line ofemperors had never ceased to embellish. When Augustin landed at Ostia, he saw rise before him, closing theperspective of the _Via Appia_, the Septizonium of Septimus Severus--animitation, doubtless, on a far larger scale, of the one at Carthage. Thishuge construction, water-works probably of enormous size, with its orderedcolumns placed line above line, was, so to speak, the portico whence openedthe most wonderful and colossal architectural mass known to the ancientworld. Modern Rome has nothing at all to shew which comes anywhere near it. Dominating the Roman Forum, and the Fora of various Emperors--labyrinths oftemples, basilicas, porticoes, and libraries--the Capitol and the Palatinerose up like two stone mountains, fashioned and sculptured, under the heapof their palaces and sanctuaries. All these blocks rooted in the soil, suspended, and towering up from the flanks of the hills, these interminableregiments of columns and pilasters, this profusion of precious marbles, metals, mosaics, statues, obelisks--in all that there was somethingenormous, a lack of restraint which disturbed the taste and floored theimagination. But it was, above all, the excessive use of gold and gildingthat astonished the visitor. Originally indigent, Rome became noted forits greed of gold. When the gold of conquered nations began to come intoits hands, it spread it all over with the rather indiscreet display ofthe upstart. When Nero built the Golden House he realized its dream. TheCapitol had golden doors. Statues, bronzes, the roofs of temples, were allgilded. All this gold, spread over the brilliant surfaces and angles ofthe architecture, dazzled and tired the eyes: _Acies stupet igne metalli_, said Claudian. For the poets who have celebrated it, Rome is the city ofgold--_aurata Roma_. A Greek, such as Lucian, had perhaps a right to be shocked by thisarchitectural debauch, this beauty too crushing and too rich. A Carthagerhetorician, like Augustin, could feel at the sight of it nothing but thesame irritated admiration and secret jealousy as the Emperor Constans feltwhen he visited his capital for the first time. Even as the Byzantine Cæsar, and all the provincials, Augustin, no doubt, examined the curiosities and celebrated works which were pointed out tostrangers: the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the baths of Caracalla andDiocletian; the Pantheon; the temple of Roma and of Venus; the Place ofConcord; the theatre of Pompey; the Odeum, and the Stadium. Though he mightbe stupefied by all this, he would remember, too, all that the Republichad taken from the provinces to construct these wonders, and would say tohimself: "'Tis we who have paid for them. " In truth, all the world hadbeen ransacked to make Rome beautiful. For some time a muffled hostilityhad been brewing in provincial hearts against the tyranny of the centralpower, especially since it had shewn itself incapable of maintaining peace, and the Barbarians were threatening the frontiers. Worn out by so manyinsurrections, wars, massacres, and pillages, the provinces had come to askif the great complicated machine of the Empire was worth all the blood andmoney that it cost. For Augustin, moreover, the crisis was drawing near which was to end in hisreturn to the Catholic faith. He had been a Christian, and as such broughtup in principles of humility. With these sentiments, he would perhapsdecide that the pride and vanity of the creature at Rome claimed far toomuch attention, and was even sacrilegious. It was not only the emperors whodisputed the privileges of immortality with the gods, but anybody who tookit into his head, provided that he was rich or had any kind of notoriety. Amid the harsh and blinding gilt of palaces and temples, how many statues, how many inscriptions endeavoured to keep an obscure memory green, or thefeatures of some unknown man! Of course, at Carthage too, where they copiedRome, as in all the big cities, there were statues and inscriptions inabundance upon the Forum, the squares, and in the public baths. But whathad not shocked Augustin in his native land, did shock him in a strangecity. His home-sick eyes opened to faults which till then had been veiledby usage. In any case, this craze for statues and inscriptions prevailed atRome more than anywhere else. The number of statues on the Forum became soinconvenient, that on many occasions certain ones were marked for felling, and the more insignificant shifted. The men of stone drove out the livingmen, and forced the gods into their temples. And the inscriptions on thewalls bewildered the mind with such a noise of human praise, that ambitioncould dream of nothing beyond. It was all a kind of idolatry which revoltedthe strict Christians; and in Augustin, even at this time, it must haveoffended the candour of a soul which detested exaggeration and bombast. The vices of the Roman people, with whom he was obliged to live cheek byjowl, galled him still more painfully. And to begin with, the natives hatedstrangers. At the theatres they used to shout: "Down with the foreignresidents!" Acute attacks of xenophobia often caused riots in the city. Some years before Augustin arrived, a panic about the food supply led tothe expulsion, as useless mouths, of all foreigners domiciled in Rome, even the professors. Famine was an endemic disease there. And then, theselazy people were always hungry. The gluttony and drunkenness of the Romansroused the wonder and also the disgust of the sober races of the Empire--ofthe Greeks as well as the Africans. They ate everywhere--in the streets, atthe theatre, at the circus, around the temples. The sight was so ignoble, and the public intemperance so scandalous, that the Prefect, Ampelius, wasobliged to issue an order prohibiting people who had any self-respect fromeating in the street, the keepers of wine-shops from opening their placesbefore ten o'clock in the morning, and the hawkers from selling cooked meatin the streets earlier than a certain hour of the day. But he might as wellhave saved himself the trouble. Religion itself encouraged this greediness. The pagan sacrifices were scarcely more than pretexts for stuffing. UnderJulian, who carried the great public sacrifices of oxen to an abusiveextent, the soldiers got drunk and gorged themselves with meat in thetemples, and came out staggering. Then they would seize hold of anypassers-by, whom they forced to carry them shoulder-high to their barracks. All this must be kept in mind so as to understand the strictness andunyielding attitude of the Christian reaction. This Roman people, like thepagans in general, was frightfully material and sensual. The difficulty ofshaking himself free from matter and the senses is going to be the greatobstacle which delays Augustin's conversion; and if it was so with him, afastidious and intellectual man, what about the crowd? Those people thoughtof nothing but eating and drinking and lewdness. When they left the tavernor their squalid rooms, they had only the obscenities of mimes, or thetumbles of the drivers in the circus, or the butcheries in the amphitheatreto elevate them. They passed the night there under the awnings provided bythe municipality. Their passion for horse-races and actors and actresses, curbed though it was by the Christian emperors, continued even afterthe sack of Rome by the Barbarians. At the time of the famine, when thestrangers were expelled, they excepted from this wholesale banishment threethousand female dancers with the members of their choirs, and their leadersof orchestra. The aristocracy did not manifest tastes much superior. Save a fewcultivated minds, sincerely fond of literature, the greatest number onlysaw in the literary pose an easy way of being fashionable. These becameinfatuated about an unknown author, or an ancient author whose books werenot to be had. They had these books sought for and beautifully copied. They, "who hated study like poison, " spoke only of their favourite author:the others did not exist for them. As a matter of fact, music had oustedliterature: "the libraries were closed like sepulchres. " But fashionablepeople were interested in an hydraulic organ, and they ordered from thelute-makers "lyres the size of chariots. " Of course, this musical craze wassheer affectation. Actually, they were only interested in sports: to race, to arrange races, to breed horses, to train athletes and gladiators. As apastime, they collected Oriental stuffs. Silk was then fashionable, and sowere precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' work. Rows of rings wereworn on each finger. People took the air in silk robes, held together bybrooches carved in the figures of animals, a parasol in one hand, and a fanwith gold fringes in the other. The costumes and fashions of Constantinopleencroached upon the old Rome and the rest of the Western world. Immense fortunes, which had gathered in the hands of certain people, eitherthrough inheritance or swindling, enabled them to keep up a senselessexpenditure. Like the American millionaires of to-day, who have theirhouses and properties in both hemispheres, these great Roman lordspossessed them in every country in the Empire. Symmachus, who was Prefectof the City when Augustin was in Rome, had considerable estates not only inItaly and in Sicily, but even in Mauretania. And yet, in spite of all theirwealth and all the privileges they enjoyed, these rich people were neitherhappy nor at ease. At the least suspicion of a despotic power, their livesand property were threatened. Accusations of magic, of disrespect tothe Cæsar, of plots against the Emperor--any pretext was good to plunderthem. During the preceding reign, that of the pitiless Valentinian, theRoman nobility had been literally decimated by the executioner. A certainvice-Prefect, Maximinus, had gained a sinister reputation for cleverness inthe art of manufacturing suspects. By his orders, a basket at the end of astring was hung out from one of the windows of the Prætorium, into whichdenunciations might be cast. The basket was in use day and night. It is clear that at the time that Augustin settled in Rome this abominablesystem was a little moderated. But accusation by detectives was always inthe air. And living in this atmosphere of mistrust, hypocrisy, bribery, andcruelty--small wonder if the Carthaginian fell into bitter reflections uponRoman corruption. However impressive from the front, the Empire was notnice to look at close at hand. But Augustin was, above all, home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shadytrees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himselfwhat he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, puthim in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel hemust go away and come back to his blazing desert. " As for himself, he hadsomething better to regret than a blazing desert. In front of the City ofGold, stretched out at his feet, and the horizon of the Sabine Hills, heremembered the feminine softness of the twilights upon the Lake of Tunis, the enchantment of moonlit nights upon the Gulf of Carthage, and thatastonishing landscape to be discovered from the height of the terrace ofByrsa, which all the grandeur of the Roman _campagna_ could not make himforget. II THE FINAL DISILLUSION 'The new professor had managed to secure a certain number of pupils whomhe gathered together in his rooms. He could make enough to live at Romeby himself, if he could not support there the woman and child he had leftbehind at Carthage. In this matter of finding work, his host and hisManichee friends had done him some very good turns. Although forced toconceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good manyManichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly organized, and its adepts had relations with all classes of Roman society. PossiblyAugustin presented himself as one driven out of Africa by the persecution. Some compensation would be owing to this young man who had suffered for thegood cause. It was his friend Alypius, "the brother of his heart, " who, having precededhim to Rome to study law at his parents' wishes, now was the most useful inhelping Augustin to make himself known and find pupils. Himself a Manichee, converted by Augustin, and a member of one of the leading families inThagaste, he had not long to wait for an important appointment in theImperial administration. He was assessor to the Treasurer-General, or"Count of the Italian Bounty Office, " and decided fiscal questions. Thanksto his influence, as well as to his acquaintances among the Manichees, hewas a valuable friend for the new arrival, a friend who could aid him, notonly with his purse, but with advice. Without much capacity for theorizing, this Alypius was a practical spirit, a straight and essentially honestsoul, whose influence was excellent for his impetuous friend. Of verychaste habits, he urged Augustin to restraint. And even in abstractstudies, the religious controversies which Augustin dragged him into, hisstrong good sense moderated the imaginative dashes, the overmuch subtiltywhich sometimes led the other beyond healthy reason. Unhappily they were both very busy--the judge and the rhetorician--andalthough their friendship became still greater during this stay in Rome, they were not able to see each other as much as they desired. Theirpleasures, too, were perhaps not the same. Augustin did not in the leastcare about being chaste, and Alypius had a passion for the amphitheatre--apassion which his friend disapproved of. Some time earlier, at Carthage, Augustin had filled him with disgust of the circus. But hardly was Alypiusarrived in Rome, than he became mad about the gladiatorial shows. Somefellow-students took him to the amphitheatre, almost by force. Thereupon, he said that he would stay, since they had dragged him there; but he betthat he would keep his eyes shut all through the fight, and that nothingcould make him open them. He sat down on the benches with those who hadbrought him, his eyelids pressed down, refusing to look. Suddenly there wasa roar of shouting, the shout of the crowd hailing the fall of the firstwounded. His lids parted of themselves; he saw the flow of blood. "At thesight of the blood" says Augustin, "he drank in ruthlessness; no longerdid he turn away, but fixed his gaze, and he became mad--and he knew nomore. .. . He was fascinated by the criminal atrocity of this battle, anddrunk with the pleasure of blood. " These breathless phrases of the _Confessions_ seem to throb still with thewild frenzy of the crowd. They convey to us directly the kind of Sadicexcitement which people went to find about the arena. Really, a wholesomesight for future Christians, for all the souls that the brutality ofpagan customs revolted! The very year that Augustin was at Rome, certainprisoners of war, Sarmatian soldiers, condemned to kill each other in theamphitheatre, chose suicide rather than this shameful death. There was inthis something to make him reflect--him and his friends. The fundamentalinjustices whereon the ancient world rested--the crushing of the slaveand the conquered, the contempt for human life--these things they touchedwith the finger when they looked on at the butcheries in the amphitheatre. All those whose hearts sickened with disgust and horror before theseslaughter-house scenes, all those who longed for a little more mildness, alittle more justice, were all recruits marked out for the peaceful army ofthe Christ. For Alypius, especially, it was not a bad thing to have known thisblood-drunkenness at first hand: he shall be only the more ashamed whenhe falls at the feet of the merciful God. Equally useful was it for himto have personal experience of the harshness of men's justice; and in thefulfilment of his duties as a judge to observe its errors and flaws. Whilehe was a student at Carthage he just escaped being condemned to death upona false accusation of theft--the theft of a piece of lead! Already theywere dragging him, if not to the place of capital punishment, at least toprison, when a chance meeting with a friend of his who was a senator savedhim from the threatening mob. At Rome, while Assessor to the Count of theItalian Bounty Office, he had to resist an attempt to bribe him, and bydoing so risked losing his appointment, and, no doubt, something worsetoo. Official venality and dishonesty were evils so deeply rooted, thathe himself nearly succumbed. He wanted some books copied, and he had thetemptation to get this done at the charge of the Treasury. This peculationhad, in his eyes, a good enough excuse, and it was certain to goundetected. Nevertheless, when he thought it over he changed his mind, andvirtuously refrained from giving himself a library at the expense of theState. Augustin, who relates these anecdotes, draws the same moral from them aswe do, to wit--that for a man who was going to be a bishop and, as such, administrator and judge, this time spent in the Government service was agood preparatory school. Most of the other great leaders of this generationof Christians had also been officials; before ordination, they had beenmixed up in business and politics, and had lived freely the life of theircentury. So it was with St. Ambrose, with St. Paulinus of Nola, withAugustin himself, and Evodius and Alypius, his friends. And yet, however absorbed in their work the two Africans might be, itis pretty near certain that intellectual questions took the lead ofall others. This is manifest in Augustin's case at least. He must haveastonished the good Alypius when he got to Rome by acknowledging that hehardly believed in Manicheeism any longer. And he set forth his doubtsabout their masters' cosmogony and physical science, his suspicionstouching the hidden immorality of the sect. As for himself, thecontroversies, which were the Manichees' strong point, did not dazzle himany longer. At Carthage, but lately, he had heard a Catholic, a certainHelpidius, oppose to them arguments from Scripture, which they were unableto refute. To make matters worse, the Manichee Bishop of Rome made a badimpression on him from the very outset. This man, he tells us, was of roughappearance, without culture or polite manners. Doubtless this unmannerlypeasant, in his reception of the young professor, had not shewn himselfsufficiently alive to his merits, and the professor felt aggrieved. From then, his keen dialectic and his satirical spirit (Augustin hadformidable powers of ridicule all through his life) were exercised uponthe backs of his fellow-religionists. Provisionally, he had admittedas indisputable the basic principles of Manicheeism: first of all, theprimordial antagonism of the two substances, the God of Light and the Godof Darkness; then, this other dogma, that particles of that Divine Light, which had been carried away in a temporary victory of the army of Darkness, were immersed in certain plants and liquors. Hence, the distinction theymade between clean and unclean food. All those foods were pure whichcontained some part of the Divine Light; impure, those which did not. Thepurity of food became evident by certain qualities of taste, smell, andappearance. But now Augustin found a good deal of arbitrariness in thesedistinctions, and a good deal of simplicity in the belief that the DivineLight dwelt in a vegetable. "Are they not ashamed, " he said, "to search Godwith their palates or with their nose? And if His presence is revealed bya special brilliancy, by the goodness of the taste or the smell, why allowthat dish and condemn this, which is of equal savour, light, and perfume? "Yea, why do they look upon the golden melon as come out of God'streasure-house, and yet will have none of the golden fat of the ham or theyellow of an egg? Why does the whiteness of lettuce proclaim to them theDivinity, and the whiteness of cream nothing at all? And why this horrorof meat? For, look you, roast sucking-pig offers us a brilliant colour, anagreeable smell, and an appetizing taste--sure signs, according to them, ofthe Divine Presence. ". .. Once started on this topic, Augustin's vivacityhas no limits. He even drops into jokes which would offend modernshamefacedness by their Aristophanic breadth. These arguments, to say the truth, did not shake the foundations of thedoctrine, and if a doctrine must be judged according to its works, theManichees might entrench themselves behind their rigid moral rules, andtheir conduct. Contrary to the more accommodating Catholicism, they paradeda puritan intolerance. But Augustin had found out at Carthage that thisausterity was for the most part hypocrisy. At Rome he was thoroughlyenlightened. The Elect of the religion made a great impression by their fasts and theirabstinence from meat. Now it became clear that these devout personages, under pious pretexts, literally destroyed themselves by over-eating andindigestion. They held, in fact, that the chief work of piety consisted insetting free particles of the Divine Light, imprisoned in matter by thewiles of the God of Darkness. They being the Pure, they purified matter byabsorbing it into their bodies. The faithful brought them stores of fruitand vegetables, served them with real feasts, so that by eating thesethings they might liberate a little of the Divine Substance. Of course, they abstained from all flesh, flesh being the dwelling-place of the DarkGod, and also from fermented wine, which they called "the devil's gall. "But how they made up for it over the rest! Augustin makes great fun ofthese people who would think it a sin if they took as a full meal a smallbit of bacon and cabbage, with two or three mouthfuls of undiluted wine, and yet ordered to be served up, from three o'clock in the afternoon, allkinds of fruit and vegetables, the most exquisite too, rendered piquantby spices, the Manichees holding that spices were very full of fiery andluminous principles. Then, their palates titillating from pepper, theyswallowed large draughts of mulled wine or wine and honey, and the juiceof oranges, lemons, and grapes. And these junketings began over again atnightfall. They had a preference for certain cakes, and especially fortruffles and mushrooms--vegetables more particularly mystic. Such a diet put human gluttony to a heavy test. Many a scandal came tolight in the Roman community. The Elect made themselves sick by devouringthe prodigious quantity of good cheer brought to them with a view topurification. As it was a sacrilege to let any be lost, the unhappy peopleforced themselves to get down the lot. There were even victims: children, gorged with delicacies, died of stuffing. For children, being innocentthings, were deemed to have quite special purifying virtues. Augustin was beginning to get indignant at all this nonsense. Still, exceptfor these extravagances, he continued to believe in the asceticism of theElect--asceticism of such severity that the main part of the faithful foundit impossible to practise. And see! just at this moment, whom should hediscover very strange things about but Bishop Faustus, that Faustus whom hehad looked for at Carthage as a Messiah. The holy man, while he preachedrenunciation, granted himself a good many indulgences: he lay, for onething, on feathers, or upon soft goatskin rugs. And these puritans were noteven honest. The Manichee Bishop of Rome, that man of rough manners who hadso offended Augustin, was on the point of being convicted of stealing thegeneral cash-box. Lastly, there were rumours in the air, accusing the Electof giving themselves over to reprehensible practices in their privatemeetings. They condemned marriage and child-bearing as works of the devil, but they authorized fornication, and even, it is said, certain acts againstnature. That, for Augustin, was the final disillusion. In spite of it, he did not separate openly from the sect. He kept hisrank of _auditor_ in the Manichee Church. What held him to it, were someplausible considerations on the intellectual side. Manicheeism, with itsdistinction of two Principles, accounted conveniently for the problem ofevil and human responsibility. Neither God nor man was answerable for sinand pain, since it was the other, the Dark Principle, who distributedthem through the world among men. Augustin, who continued to sin, continued likewise to be very comfortable with such a system of morals andmetaphysics. Besides, he was not one of those convinced, downright mindswho feel the need to quarrel noisily with what they take to be error. No one has opposed heresies more powerfully, and with a more tirelesspatience, than he has. But he always put some consideration into thebusiness. He knew by experience how easy it is to fall into error, and hesaid this charitably to those whom he wished to persuade. There was nothingabout him like St. Jerome. Personal reasons, moreover, obliged him not to break with hisfellow-religionists who had supported him, nursed him even, on his arrivalat Rome, and who, as we shall see in a moment, might still do him services. Augustin was not, like his friend Alypius, a practical mind, but he hadtact, and in spite of all the impulsiveness and mettle of his nature, a certain suppleness which enabled him to manoeuvre without too manycollisions in the midst of the most embarrassing conjunctures. Throughinstinctive prudence he prolonged his indecision. Little by little, he whohad formerly flung himself so enthusiastically in pursuit of Truth, glidedinto scepticism--the scepticism of the Academics in its usual form. And at the same time that he lost his taste for speculative thinking, newannoyances in his profession put the finishing touch on his discouragement. If the Roman students were less noisy than those of Carthage, they had adeplorable habit of walking off and leaving their masters unpaid. Augustinwas ere long victimized in this way: he lost his time and his words. As atCarthage, so at Rome, he had to face the fact that he could not live by hisprofession. What was he to do? Would he have to go back home? He had falleninto despair, when an unforeseen chance turned up for him. The town council of Milan threw open a professorship of Rhetoric to publiccompetition. It would be salvation for him if he could get appointed. Fora long time he had wanted a post in the State education. In receipt of afixed salary, he would no longer have to worry about beating up a class, or to guard against the dishonesty of his pupils. He put his name downimmediately among the candidates. But no more in those days than in ourswas simple merit by itself enough. It was necessary to pull strings. Hisfriends the Manichees undertook to do this for him. They urged his claimswarmly on the Prefect Symmachus, who doubtless presided at the competitivetrials. By an amusing irony of fate, Augustin owed his place to people hewas getting ready to separate from, whom even he was soon going to attack, and also to a man who was in a way the official enemy of Christianity. The pagan Symmachus appointing to an important post a future Catholicbishop--there is matter for surprise in that! But Symmachus, who had beenProconsul at Carthage, protected the Africans in Rome. Furthermore, itis likely that the Manichees represented their candidate to him as a manhostile to Catholics. Now in this year, A. D. 384, the Prefect had justbegun an open struggle with the Catholics. He believed, therefore, that hemade a good choice in appointing Augustin. So a chain of events, with which his will had hardly anything to do, was going to draw the young rhetorician to Milan--yes, and how muchfarther!--to where he did not want to go, to where the prayers of Monnicasummoned him unceasingly: "Where I am, there shall you be also. " When hewas leaving Rome, he did not much expect that. What he chiefly thought ofwas that he had at last won an independent financial position, and that hewas become an official of some importance. He had a flattering evidenceof this at once: It was at the expense of the city of Milan and in theImperial carriages that he travelled through Italy to take up his new post. III THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN Before he left Rome, and during his journey to Milan, Augustin must haverecalled more than once the verses of Terence which his friend Marcianushad quoted by way of encouragement and advice the night he set sail forItaly: "This day which brings to thee another life Demands that thou another man shalt be. " He was thirty years old. The time of youthful wilfulness was over. Age, disappointments, the difficulties of life, had developed his character. He was now become a man of position, an eminent official, in a very largecity which was the second capital of the Western Empire and the principalresidence of the Court. If he wished to avoid further set-backs in hiscareer, it behoved him to choose a line of conduct carefully thought out. And first of all, it was time to get rid of Manicheeism. A Manichee wouldhave made a scandal in a city where the greatest part of the populationwas Christian, and the Court was Catholic, although it did not concealits sympathy with Arianism. It was a long time now since Augustin hadbeen a Manichee in his heart. Accordingly, he was not obliged to feignin order to re-enter a Church which already included him formally amongits catechumens. Doubtless he was a very lukewarm catechumen, since atintervals he inclined to scepticism. But he thought it decent to remain, at least for the time being, in the Catholic body, in which his mother hadbrought him up, until the day when some sure light should arise to directhis path. Now St. Ambrose was at that time the Catholic Bishop of Milan. Augustin was very eager to gain his goodwill. Ambrose was an undoubtedpolitical power, an important personage, a celebrated orator whose renownwas shed all across the Roman world. He belonged to an illustrious family. His father had been Prætorian prefect of Gaul. He himself, with thetitle of Consul, was governing the provinces of Emilia and Liguria whenthe Milanese forced him, much against his will, to become their bishop. Baptized, ordained priest, and consecrated, one on top of the other, itwas only apparently that he gave up his civil functions. From the heightof his episcopal throne he always personified the highest authority in thecountry. As soon as he arrived at Milan, Augustin hurried to call upon his bishop. Knowing him as we do, he must have approached Ambrose in a great transportof enthusiasm. His imagination, too, was kindled. In his thought this wasa man of letters, an orator, a famous writer, almost a fellow-worker, thathe was going to see. The young professor admired in Bishop Ambrose all theglory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himselfto be. He fancied, that however great might be the difference in theirpositions, he would find himself at once on an equal footing with this highpersonage, and would have a familiar talk with him, as he used to have atCarthage with the Proconsul Vindicianus. He told himself also that Ambrosewas a priest, that is to say, a doctor of souls: he meant to open to himall his spiritual wretchedness, the anguish of his mind and heart. Heexpected consolation from him, if not cure. Well, he was mistaken. Although in all his writings he speaks of "the holyBishop of Milan" with feelings of sincere respect and admiration, he letsit be understood that his expectations were not realized. If the Manicheanbishop of Rome had offended him by his rough manners, Ambrose disconcertedhim alike by his politeness, his kindliness, and by the reserve, perhaps involuntarily haughty, of his reception. "He received me, " saysAugustin, "like a father, and as a bishop he was pleased enough at mycoming:"--_peregrinationem meam satis episcopaliter dilexit_. This _satisepiscopaliter_ looks very like a sly banter at the expense of the saint. Itis infinitely probable that St. Ambrose received Augustin, not exactly as aman of no account, but still, as a sheep of his flock, and not as a giftedorator, and that, in short, he shewed him the same "episcopal" benevolenceas he had from a sense of duty for all his hearers. It is possible toothat Ambrose was on his guard from the outset with this African, appointeda municipal professor through the good offices of the pagan Symmachus, his personal enemy. In the opinion of the Italian Catholics, nothinggood came from Carthage: these Carthaginians were generally Manicheesor Donatists--sectaries the more dangerous because they claimed to beorthodox, and, mingling with the faithful, hypocritically contaminatedthem. And then Ambrose, the great lord, the former Governor of Liguria, thecounsellor of the Emperors, may not have quite concealed a certain ironiccommiseration for this "dealer in words, " this young rhetorician who wasstill puffed up with his own importance. Be this as it will, it was a lesson in humility that St. Ambrose, withoutintending it, gave to Augustin. The lesson was not understood. The rhetoricprofessor gathered only one thing from the visit, which was, that theBishop of Milan had received him well. And as human vanity immediatelylends vast significance to the least advances of distinguished or powerfulpersons, Augustin felt thankful for it. He began to love Ambrose almost asmuch as he admired him, and he admired him for reasons altogether worldly. "Ambrose I counted one of the happy ones of this world, because he was heldin such honour by the great. " The qualification which immediately followsshews naively enough the sensual Augustin's state of mind at that time:"Only it seemed to me that celibacy must be a heavy burthen upon him. " In those years the Bishop of Milan might, indeed, pass for a happy manin the eyes of the world. He was the friend of the very glorious andvery victorious Theodosius; he had been the adviser of the young EmperorGratian, but lately assassinated; and although the Empress Justina, devotedto the Arians, plotted against him, he had still great influence in thecouncil of Valentinian II--a little Emperor thirteen years old, whom aCourt of pagans and Arians endeavoured to draw into an anti-Catholicreaction. Almost as soon as Augustin arrived in Milan, he was able to see for himselfthe great authority and esteem which Ambrose possessed, the occasion beinga dispute which made a great noise. Two years earlier, Gratian had had the statue and altar of _Victory_removed from the _Curia_, declaring that this pagan emblem and itsaccompaniments no longer served any purpose in an assembly of which themajority was Christian. By the same stroke, he suppressed the incomes ofthe sacerdotal colleges with all their privileges, particularly those ofthe Vestals; confiscated for the revenue the sums granted for the exerciseof religion; seized the property of the temples; and forbade the prieststo receive bequests of real estate. This meant the complete separationof the State and the ancient religion. The pagan minority in the Senate, with Symmachus, the Prefect, at its head, protested against this edict. A deputation was sent to Milan to place the pagan grievances beforethe Emperor. Gratian refused to receive them. It was thought that hissuccessor, Valentinian II, being feebler, would be more obliging. A newsenatorial committee presented themselves with a petition drawn up bySymmachus--a genuine piece of oratory which Ambrose himself admired, orpretended to admire. This speech made a deep impression when it was readin the Imperial Council. But Ambrose intervened with all his eloquence. He demanded that the common law should be applied equally to pagans as toChristians, and it was he who won the day. _Victory_ was not replaced inthe Roman _Curia_, neither were the goods of the temples returned. Augustin must have been very much struck by this advantage whichCatholicism had gained. It became clear that henceforth this was to bethe State religion. And he who envied so much the fortunate of the world, might take note, besides, that the new religion brought, along with thefaith, riches and honours to its adepts. At Rome he had listened to thedisparaging by pagans and his Manichee friends of the popes and theirclergy. They made fun of the fashionable clerics and legacy hunters. It wasrelated that the Roman Pontiff, servant of the God of the poor, maintaineda gorgeous establishment, and that his table rivalled the Imperial table inluxury. The prefect Prætextatus, a resolute pagan, said scoffingly to PopeDamasus: "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I'll become a Christian at once. " Certainly, commonplace human reasons can neither bring about nor accountfor a sincere conversion. Conversion is a divine work. But human reasons, arranged by a mysterious Will with regard to this work, may at leastprepare a soul for it. Anyhow, it cannot be neglected that Augustin, comingto Milan full of ambitious plans, there saw Catholicism treated with somuch importance in the person of Ambrose. This religion, which till then hehad despised, now appeared to him as a triumphant religion worth serving. But though such considerations might attract Augustin's attention, theytook no hold on his conscience. It was well enough for an intriguer aboutthe Court to get converted from self-interest. As for him, he wanted all ornothing; the chief good in his eyes was certainty and truth. He scarcelybelieved in this any longer, and surely had no hope of finding it amongthe Catholics; but still he went to hear Ambrose's sermons. He went in thefirst place as a critic of language, with the rather jealous curiosity ofthe trained man who watches how another man does it. He wanted to judgehimself if the sacred orator was as good as his reputation. The firm andsubstantial eloquence of this former official, this statesman who was morethan anything a man of action, immediately got control of the frivolousrhetorician. To be sure, he did not find in Ambrose's sermons theexhilaration or the verbal caress which had captivated him in those ofFaustus the Manichean; but yet they had a persuasive grace which held him. Augustin heard the bishop with pleasure. Still, if he liked to hear himtalk, he remained contemptuous of the doctrine he preached. Then, little by little, this doctrine forced itself on his meditations:he perceived that it was more serious than he had thought hitherto, or, at least, that it could be defended. Ambrose had started in Italy theexegetical methods of the Orientals. He discovered in Scripture allegoricalmeanings, sometimes edifying, sometimes deep, always satisfying for areasonable mind. Augustin, who was inclined to subtilty, much relishedthese explanations which, if ingenious, were often forced. The Bibleno longer seemed to him so absurd. Finally, the immoralities which theManichees made such a great point of against the Holy Writ, were justified, according to Ambrose, by historical considerations: what God did not allowto-day, He allowed formerly by reason of the conditions of existence. However, though the Bible might be neither absurd nor contrary to morals, this did not prove that it was true. Augustin found no outlet for hisdoubts. He would have been glad to have Ambrose help him to get rid of them. Many atime he tried to have a talk with him about these things. But the Bishop ofMilan was so very busy a personage! "I could not ask him, " says Augustin, "what I wanted as I wanted, because the shoals of busy people who consultedhim about their affairs, and to whose infirmities he ministered, camebetween me and his ear and lips. And in the few moments when he was notthus surrounded, he was refreshing either his body with needful food, orhis mind with reading. While he read his eye wandered along the page andhis heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and his tongue were atrest. Often when we attended (for the door was open to all, and no one wasannounced), we saw him reading silently, but never otherwise, and aftersitting for some time without speaking (_for who would presume to troubleone so occupied?_) we went away again. We divined that, for the littlespace of time which was all that he could secure for the refreshment of hismind, he allowed himself a holiday from the distraction of other people'sbusiness, and did not wish to be interrupted; _and perhaps he was afraidlest eager listeners should invite him to explain the harder passages ofhis author, or to enter upon the discussion of difficult topics_, andhinder him from perusing as many volumes as he wished. .. . _Of coursethe reason that guided a man of such remarkable virtue must have beengood. .. . _" Nobody could comment more subtly--nor, be it said also, moremaliciously--the attitude of St. Ambrose towards Augustin, than Augustinhimself does it here. At the time he wrote this page, the events he wasrelating had happened a long time ago. But he is a Christian, and, in histurn, he is a bishop: he understands now what he could not understandthen. He feels thoroughly at heart that if Ambrose withdrew himself, itwas because the professor of rhetoric was not in a state of mind to have aprofitable discussion with a believer: he lacked the necessary humility ofheart and intellect. But at the moment, he must have taken things in quiteanother way, and have felt rather hurt, not to say more, at the bishop'sapparent indifference. Just picture a young writer of to-day, pretty well convinced of his value, but uneasy about his future, coming to ask advice of an older man alreadyfamous--well, Augustin's advances to Ambrose were not unlike that, savethat they had a much more serious character, since it was not a question ofliterature, but of the salvation of a soul. At this period, what Augustinsaw in Ambrose, even when he consulted him on sacred matters, was chieflythe orator, that is to say, a rather older rival. .. . He enters. He is shewninto the private room of the great man, without being announced, _like anyordinary person_. The great man does not lay aside his book to greet him, does not even speak a word to him. .. . What would the official professor ofRhetoric to the City of Milan think of such a reception? One can make outclearly enough through the lines of the _Confessions_. He said to himselfthat Ambrose, being a bishop, had charge of souls, and he was surprisedthat the bishop, no matter how great a lord he might be, made no attemptwhatever to offer him spiritual aid. And as he was still devoid ofChristian charity, no doubt he thought too that Ambrose was consciousthat he had not the ability to wrestle with a dialectician of Augustin'sstrength, and that, into the bargain, the prelate was to seek in knowledgeof the Scriptures. And, in truth, Ambrose had been made a bishop sosuddenly that he must have found himself obliged to improvise a hastyknowledge. Anyhow, Augustin concluded that if he refused to discuss, it wasbecause he was afraid of being at a disadvantage. Very surely St. Ambrose had no notion of what the catechumen was thinking. He soared too high to trouble about miserable stings to self-respect. Inhis ministry he was for all alike, and he would have thought it againstChristian equality to shew any special favour to Augustin. If, in the brieftalks he had with the young rhetorician, he was able to gather anything ofhis character, he could not have formed a very favourable opinion of it. The high-strung temperament of the African, these vague yearnings of thespirit, these sterile melancholies, this continual temporizing before thefaith--all that could only displease Ambrose, the practical Roman, theofficial used all his life to command. However that was, Augustin, in following years, never allowed himself theleast reproach towards Ambrose. On the contrary, everywhere he loads himwith praise, quotes him repeatedly in his treatises, and takes refuge onhis authority. He calls him his "father. " But once, when he is speakingof the spiritual desolation in which he was plunged at Milan, there doesescape him something like a veiled complaint which appears to be aimed atAmbrose. After recalling the eagerness with which he sought truth in thosedays, he adds: "If any one could have been found then to trouble aboutinstructing me, he would have had a most willing and docile pupil. " This phrase, in such marked contrast with so many laudatory passages inthe _Confessions_ about St. Ambrose, seems to be indeed a statement ofthe plain truth. If God made use of Ambrose to convert Augustin, it isnevertheless likely that Ambrose personally did nothing, or very little, tobring about this conversion. IV PLANS OF MARRIAGE But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on thecontrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Whosnatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till thevery eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will beall taken up with the world and the care of making a good figure in it. Although Ambrose's sermons stimulated him to reflect upon the greathistorical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpsesof it. He had given up his superficial unbelief, and yet did not believein anything definite. He drifted into a sort of agnosticism compounded ofmental indolence and discouragement. When he scrutinized his conscience tothe depths, the most he could find was a belief in the existence of God andHis providence--quite abstract ideas which he was incapable of enlivening. But whatever was the use of speculating upon Truth and the Sovereign Good!The main thing to do was to live. Now that his future was certain, Augustin endeavoured to arrange his lifewith a view to his tranquillity. He had no longer very large ambitions. What he principally wanted to do was to create for himself a nice littleexistence, peaceful and agreeable, one might almost say, middle-class. Hispresent fortune, although small, was still enough for that, and he was in ahurry to enjoy it. Accordingly, he had not been long in Milan ere he sent for his mistress andhis son. He had rented an apartment in a house which gave on a garden. Theowner, who did not live there, allowed him the use of the whole house. Ahouse, the dream of the sage! And a garden in Virgil's country! Augustin, the professor, should have been wonderfully happy. His mother soon joinedhim. Gradually a whole tribe of Africans came down on him, and tookadvantage of his hospitality. Here was his brother, Navigius, his twocousins, Rusticus and Lastidianus, his friend Alypius, who could not makeup his mind to part from him, and probably Nebridius, another of hisCarthage friends. Nothing could be more in harmony with the customs of thetime. The Rhetorician to the City of Milan had a post which would passfor superb in the eyes of his poor relations. He was acquainted with veryimportant people, and had access to the Imperial Court, whence favours andbounties came. Immediately, the family ran to put themselves under hisprotection and be enrolled beneficiaries, to get what they could out ofhis new fortune and credit. And then these immigrations of Africans andOrientals into the northern countries always come about in the same way. Itis enough if one of them gets on there: he becomes immediately the drop ofink on the blotting-paper. The most important person in this little African phalanstery wasunquestionably Monnica, who had taken in hand the moral and materialcontrol of the house. She was not very old--not quite fifty-four--but shewanted to be in her own country. That she should have left it, and facedthe weariness of a long journey over sea and land, she must have had veryserious reasons. The poverty into which she had fallen since the death ofher husband would not be an adequate explanation of her departure fromher native land. She had still some small property at Thagaste; she couldhave lived there. The true motives of her departure were of an altogetherdifferent order. First of all, she passionately loved her son, to the pointthat she was not able to live away from him. Let us recall Augustin'stouching words: "For she loved to keep me with her, as mothers are wont, yes, far more than most mothers. " Besides that, she wanted to save him. Shecompletely believed that this was her work in the world. Beginning from now, she is no longer the widow of Patricius: she is alreadySaint Monnica. Living like a nun, she fasted, prayed, mortified her body. By long meditating on the Scriptures, she had developed within her thesense of spiritual realities, so that before long she astonished Augustinhimself. She had visions; perhaps she had trances. As she came over the seafrom Carthage to Ostia, the ship which carried her ran into a wild gale. The danger became extreme, and the sailors themselves could no longer hidetheir fear. But Monnica intrepidly encouraged them. "Never you fear, weshall arrive in port safe and sound!" God, she declared, had promised herthis. If, in her Christian life, she knew other minutes more divine, that wastruly the most heroic. Across Augustin's calm narrative, we witness thescene. This woman lying on the deck among passengers half dead from fatigueand terror, suddenly flings back her veils, stands up before the maddenedsea, and with a sudden flame gleaming over her pale face, she cries to thesailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. _I am sure of it!_" Theglorious act of faith! At this solemn moment, when she saw death so near, she had a clearrevelation of her destiny; she knew with absolute certainty that she wasentrusted with a message for her son, and that her son would receive thismessage, in spite of all, in spite of the wildness of the sea--aye, inspite of his own heart. When this sublime emotion had subsided, it left with her the convictionthat sooner or later Augustin would change his ways. He had lost himself, he was mistaken about himself. This business of rhetorician was unworthyof him. The Master of the field had chosen him to be one of the greatreapers in the time of harvest. For a long while Monnica had foreseen theexceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritteraway his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there wereheresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists werecapturing the African basilicas from the Catholics? What, in fact, was themost celebrated rhetorician compared to a bishop--protector of cities, counsellor of emperors, representative of God on earth? All this mightAugustin be. And he remained stubborn in his error! Prayers and effortsmust be redoubled to draw him from that. It was also for herself that shestruggled, for the dearest of her hopes as a mother. To bear a soul toJesus Christ--and a chosen soul who would save in his turn souls withoutnumber--for this only had she lived. And so it was that on the deck, tiredby the rolling of the ship, drenched by the seas that were breaking onboard, and hardly able to stand in the teeth of the wind, she cried out tothe sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. I am sure of it. .. . " At Milan she was regarded by Bishop Ambrose as a model parishioner. Shenever missed his sermons and "hung upon his lips as a fountain of waterspringing up to eternal life. " And yet it does not appear that the greatbishop understood the mother any better than he did the son: he had notthe time. For him Monnica was a worthy African woman, perhaps a little oddin her devotion, and given to many a superstitious practice. Thus, shecontinued to carry baskets of bread and wine and pulse to the tombs of themartyrs, according to the use at Carthage and Thagaste. When, carryingher basket, she came to the door of one of the Milanese basilicas, thedoorkeeper forbade her to enter, saying that it was against the bishop'sorders, who had solemnly condemned such practices because they smackedof idolatry. The moment she learned that this custom was prohibited byAmbrose, Monnica, very much mortified, submitted to take away her basket, for in her eyes Ambrose was the providential apostle who would lead her sonto salvation. And yet it must have grieved her to give up this old customof her country. Save for the fear of displeasing the bishop, she wouldhave kept it up. Ambrose was gratified by her obedience, her fervour andcharity. When by chance he met the son, he congratulated him on having sucha mother. Augustin, who did not yet despise human praise, no doubt expectedthat Ambrose would in turn pay some compliments to himself. But Ambrose didnot praise him at all, and perhaps he felt rather vexed. He himself, however, was always very busy; he had hardly any time to profitby the pious exhortations of the bishop. His day was filled by his workand his social duties. In the morning he lectured. The afternoon went infriendly visits, or in looking up men of position whom he applied to forhimself or his relations. In the evening, he prepared to-morrow's lecture. In spite of this very full and stirring life, which would seem to satisfyall his ambitions, he could not manage to stifle the cry of his heart indistress. He did not feel really happy. In the first place, it is doubtfulwhether he liked Milan any better than Rome. He felt the cold there verymuch. The Milanese winters are very trying, especially for a southerner. Thick fogs rise from the canals and the marsh lands which surround thecity. The Alpine snows are very near. This climate, damper and frostiereven than at Rome, did no good to his chest. He suffered continually fromhoarseness; he was obliged to interrupt his lectures--a most disastrousnecessity for a man whose business it is to talk. These attacks became sofrequent that he was forced to wonder if he could keep on long in thisstate. Already he felt that he might be obliged to give up his profession. Then, in those hours when he lost heart, he flung to the winds all hisyouthful ambitions. As a last resort, the voiceless rhetorician would takea post in one of the administrative departments of the Empire. The idea ofbeing one day a provincial governor did not rouse any special repugnance. What a fall for him! "Yes, but it is the wisest, the wisest thing, "retorted the ill-advising voice, the one we are tempted to listen to whenwe doubt ourselves. Friendship, as always with Augustin, consoled him for his hopelessthoughts. Near him was "the brother of his heart, " the faithful Alypius, and also Nebridius, that young man so fond of metaphysical discussions. Nebridius had left his rich estate in the Carthaginian suburbs, and amother who loved him, simply to live with Augustin in the pursuit of truth. Romanianus was also there, but for a less disinterested reason. The Mæcenasof Thagaste, after his ostentatious expenditure, found that his fortunewas threatened. A powerful enemy, who had started a law-suit against him, worked to bring about his downfall. Romanianus had come to Milan todefend himself before the Emperor, and to win the support of influentialpersonages about the Court. And so it came about that he saw a great dealof Augustin. Besides this little band of fellow-countrymen, the professor of rhetorichad some very distinguished friends among the aristocracy. He wasespecially intimate with that Manlius Theodorus whom the poet Claudiancelebrates, and to whom he himself later on was to dedicate one of hisbooks. This rich man, who had been Proconsul at Carthage, where no doubt hehad met Augustin, lived at this time retired in the country, dividing hisleisure hours between the study of the Greek philosophers, especially ofthe Platonists, and the cultivation of his vineyards and olive trees. Here, as at Thagaste, in these beautiful villas on the shores of theItalian lakes, the son of Monnica gave himself up once more to thesweetness of life. "I liked an easy life, " he avows in all simplicity. He felt himself to be more Epicurean than ever. He might have chosenEpicureanism altogether, if he had not always kept a fear of what is beyondlife. But when he was the guest of Manlius Theodoras, fronting the dim bluemountains of lake Como, framed in the high windows of the _triclinium_, he did not think much about what is beyond life. He said to himself: "Whydesire the impossible? So very little is needed to satisfy a human soul. "The enervating contact of luxury and comfort imperceptibly corrupted him. He became like those fashionable people whom he knew so well how to charmwith his talk. Like the fashionable people of all times, these designatedvictims of the Barbarians built, with their small daily pleasures, arampart against all offensive or saddening realities, leaving the importantquestions without answer, no longer even asking them. And they said:"I have beautiful books, a well-heated house, well-trained slaves, adelightfully arranged bathroom, a comfortable vehicle: life is sweet. Idon't wish for a better. What's the use? This one is good enough for me. "At the moment when his tired intellect gave up everything, Augustin wastaken in the snare of easy enjoyment, and desired to resemble these peopleat all points, to be one of them. But to be one of them he must have ahigher post than a rhetorician's, and chiefly it would be necessary to putall the outside forms and exterior respectability into his life that theworld of fashion shews. Thus, little by little, he began to think seriouslyof marriage. His mistress was the only obstacle in the way of this plan. He got rid ofher. That was a real domestic drama, which he has tried to hide; but it musthave been extremely painful for him, to judge by the laments which he givesvent to, despite himself, in some phrases, very brief and, as it were, ashamed. In this drama Monnica was certainly the leader, though it islikely that Augustin's friends also played their parts. No doubt, theyobjected to the professor of rhetoric, that he was injuring his reputationas well as his future by living thus publicly with a concubine. ButMonnica's reasons were more forcible and of quite another value. To begin with, it is very natural that she should have suffered in hermaternal dignity, as well as in her conscience as a Christian, by having toput up with the company of a stranger who was her son's mistress. Howeverlarge we may suppose the house where the African tribe dwelt, a certainclashing between the guests was unavoidable. Generally, disputes as towho shall direct the domestic arrangements divide mother-in-law anddaughter-in-law who live under one roof. What could be Monnica's feelingstowards a woman who was not even a daughter-in-law and was regarded by heras an intruder? She did not consider it worth while to make any attempt atregulating the entanglement of her son by marrying them: this person wasof far too low a class. It is all very well to be a saint, but one doesnot forget that one is the widow of a man of curial rank, and that amiddle-class family with self-respect does not lower itself by admittingthe first-comer into its ranks by marriage. But these were secondaryconsiderations in her eyes. The only one which could have really preyed onher mind is that this woman delayed Augustin's conversion. On account ofher, as Monnica saw plainly, he put off his baptism indefinitely. She wasthe chain of sin, the unclean past under whose weight he stifled. He mustbe freed from her as soon as possible. Convinced therefore that such was her bounden duty, she worked continuallyto make him break off. By way of putting him in some sort face to face witha deed impossible to undo, she searched to find him a wife, with the fineeagerness that mothers usually put into this kind of hunt. She discovereda girl who filled, as they say, all the requirements, and who realized allthe hopes of Augustin. She had a fortune considerable enough not to be aburthen on her husband. Her money, added to the professor's salary, wouldallow the pair to live in ease and comfort. So they were betrothed. Inthe uncertainty about all things which was Augustin's state just then, heallowed his mother to work at this marriage. No doubt he approved, and likea good official he thought it was time for him to settle down. From that moment, the separation became inevitable. How did the poorcreature who had been faithful to him during so many years feel at thisignominious dismissal? What must have been the parting between the childAdeodatus and his mother? How, indeed, could Augustin consent to take himfrom her? Here, again, he has decided to keep silent on this painful drama, from a feeling of shame easy to understand. Of course, he was no longerstrongly in love with his mistress, but he was attached to her by someremains of tenderness, and by that very strong tie of pleasure shared. Hehas said it in words burning with regret. "When they took from my side, asan obstacle to my marriage, her with whom I had been used for such a longtime to sleep, my heart was torn at the place where it was stuck to hers, and the wound was bleeding. " The phrase casts light while it burns. "At theplace where my heart stuck to hers"--_cor ubi adhærebat_. He acknowledgesthen that the union was no longer complete, since at many points he haddrawn apart. If the soul of his mistress had remained the same, his hadchanged: however much he might still love her, he was already far from her. Be that as it will, she behaved splendidly in the affair--this forsakenwoman, this poor creature whom they deemed unworthy of Augustin. She was aChristian; perhaps she perceived (for a loving woman might well have thiskind of second-sight) that it was a question not only of the salvation ofa loved being, but of a divine mission to which he was predestined. Shesacrificed herself that Augustin might be an apostle and a saint--a greatservant of God. So she went back to her Africa, and to shew that shepardoned, if she could not forget, she vowed that she would never know anyother man. "She who had slept" with Augustin could never be the wife of anyone else. However low she may have been to begin with, the unhappy woman was great atthis crisis. Her nobility of soul humiliated Augustin, and Monnica herself, and punishment was not slow in falling on them both--on him, for lettinghimself be carried away by sordid plans for success in life, and upon her, the saint, for having been too accommodating. As soon as his mistress wasgone, Augustin suffered from being alone. "I thought that I should bemiserable, " says he, "without the embraces of a woman. " Now his promisedbride was too young: two years must pass before he could marry her. Howcould he control himself till then? Augustin did not hesitate: he foundanother mistress. There was Monnica's punishment, cruelly deceived in her pious intentions. In vain did she hope a great deal of good from this approaching marriage:the silence of God shewed her that she was on the wrong track. She beggedfor a vision, some sign which would reveal to her how this new-plannedmarriage would turn out. Her prayer was not heard. "Meanwhile, " says Augustin, "my sins were being multiplied. " But he didnot limit himself to his own sins: he led others into temptation. Even inmatrimonial matters, he felt the need of making proselytes. So he fell uponthe worthy Alypius. He, to be sure, guarded himself chastely from women, although in the outset of his youth, to be like everybody else, he hadtried pleasure with women; but he had found that it did not suit his taste. However, Augustin put conjugal delights before him with so much heat, thathe too began to turn his thoughts that way, "not that he was overcome bythe desire of pleasure, _but out of curiosity_. " For Alypius, marriagewould be a sort of philosophic and sentimental experience. Here are quite modern expressions to translate very old conditions of soul. The fact is, that these young men, Augustin's friends and Augustin himself, were startlingly like those of a generation already left behind, alas! whowill probably keep in history the presumptuous name they gave themselves:_The Intellectuals_. Like us, these young Latins of Africa, pupils of the rhetoricians and thepagan philosophers, believed in hardly anything but ideas. All but ready toaffirm that Truth is not to be come at, they thought, just the same, thata vain hunt after it was a glorious risk to run, or, at the very least, anexciting game. For them this game made the whole dignity and value of life. Although they had spasms of worldly ambition, they really despised whateverwas not pure speculation. In their eyes, the world was ugly; actiondegrading. They barred themselves within the ideal garden of the sage, "thephilosopher's corner, " as they called it, and jealously they stopped up allthe holes through which the painful reality might have crept through tothem. But where they differed from us, is that they had much less drynessof soul, with every bit as much pedantry--but such ingenuous pedantry!That's what saved them--their generosity of soul, the youth of theirhearts. They loved each other, and they ended by growing fond of life andgetting in contact with it again. Nebridius journeyed from Carthage toMilan, abandoning his mother and family, neglecting considerable interests, not only to talk philosophy with Augustin, but to live with him as afriend. From this moment they might have been putting in practice thosewords of the Psalm, which Augustin ere long will be explaining to his monkswith such tender eloquence: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is forbrethren to dwell together in unity!" This is not baseless hypothesis: they had really a plan for establishing akind of lay monastery, where the sole rule would be the search after Truthand the happy life. There would be about a dozen solitaries. They wouldmake a common stock of what means they possessed. The richest, and amongthese Romanianus, promised to devote their whole fortune to the community. But the recollection of their wives brought this naive plan to nothing. They had neglected to ask the opinions of their wives, and if these, aswas likely, should refuse to enter the convents with their husbands, themarried men could not face the scheme of living without them. Augustinespecially, who was on the point of starting a new connection, declaredthat he would never find the courage for it. He had also forgotten thathe had many dependents: his whole family lived on him. Could he leave hismother, his son, his brother, and his cousins? In company with Alypius and Nebridius, he sincerely lamented that thisfair dream of coenobite life was impracticable. "We were three famishingmouths, " he says, "complaining of our distress one to another, and waitingupon Thee that Thou mightest give us our meat in due season. And in allthe bitterness that Thy mercy put into our worldly pursuits, we sought thereason why we suffered; and all was darkness. Then we turned to each othershuddering, and asked: 'How much longer can this last?'. .. " One day, a slight commonplace fact which they happened upon brought hometo them still more cruelly their intellectual poverty. Augustin, in hisofficial position as municipal orator, had just delivered the officialpanegyric of the Emperor. The new year was opening: the whole city wasgiven over to mirth. And yet he was cast down, knowing well that he hadjust uttered many an untruth, and chiefly because he despaired of everbeing happy. His friends were walking with him. Suddenly, as they crossedthe street, they came upon a beggar, quite drunk, who was indulging in thejolliest pranks. So there was a happy man! A few pence had been enoughto give him perfect felicity, whereas they, the philosophers, despitethe greatest efforts and all their knowledge, could not manage to winhappiness. No doubt, as soon as the drunkard grew sober, he would be morewretched than before. What matters that, if this poor joy--yes, though itbe an illusion--can so much cheer a poor creature, thus raise him so farabove himself! That minute, at least, he shall have lived in full bliss. And to Augustin came the temptation to do as the beggar-man, to throwoverboard his philosophical lumber and set himself simply to live withoutafterthoughts, since life is sometimes good. But an instinct, stronger than the instinct of pleasure, said to him:"_There is something else!_--Suppose that were true?--Perhaps you might beable to find out. " This thought tormented him unceasingly. Now eager, nowdisheartened, he set about trying to find the "something else. " V THE CHRIST IN THE GARDEN "I was tired of devouring time and of being devoured by it. " The wholemoral crisis that Augustin is about to undergo might be summed up in thesefew words so concentrated and so strong. No more to scatter himself amongthe multitude of vain things, no more to let himself flow along with theminutes as they flowed; but to pull himself together, to escape from therout so as to establish himself upon the incorruptible and eternal, tobreak the chains of the old slave he continues to be so as to blossom forthin liberty, in thought, in love--that is the salvation he longs for. If itbe not yet the Christian salvation, he is on the road which leads to that. One might amuse oneself by drawing a kind of ideal map-route of hisconversion, and fastening into one solid chain the reasons which made himemerge at the act of faith: he himself perhaps, in his _Confessions_, has given way too much to this inclination. In reality, conversion is aninterior fact, and (let us repeat it) a divine fact, which is independentof all control by the reason. Before it breaks into light, there is a longpreparation in that dark region of the soul which to-day is called thesubconscious. Now nobody has more _lived_ his ideas than did Augustinat this time of his life. He took them, left them, took them up again, persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder hisvariable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yetit cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradictionwith logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the futurebeliever, a parallel work goes on in the feelings and in the thought. If weare not able to reproduce the marches and counter-marches, or follow theirrepeatedly broken line, we can at least shew the main halting-places. Let us recall Augustin's state of mind when he came to Milan. He was asceptic, the kind of sceptic who regards as useless all speculation uponthe origin of things, and for whom cognition is but an approximation of thetrue. Vaguely deist, he saw in Jesus Christ only a wise man among the wise. He believed in God and the providences of God, which amounts to this: Thatalthough materialist by tendency, he admitted the divine interference inhuman affairs--the miracle. This is an important point which differentiateshim from modern materialists. Next, he listened to the preaching of Ambrose. The Bible no longer seemedto him absurd or at variance with a moral scheme. Ambrose's exegesis, half allegorical, half historic, might be accepted, taken altogether, by self-respecting minds. But what, above all, struck Augustin in theScriptures, was the wisdom, the practical efficiency. Those who lived bythe Christian rule were not only happy people, but, as Pascal would say, good sons, good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. He began to suspectthat this life here below is bearable and has a meaning only when it isfastened to the life on high. Even as for nations glory is daily bread, sofor the individual the sacrifice to something which is beyond the world isthe only way of living in the world. So, little by little, Augustin corrected the false notions that theManichees had filled him with about Catholicism. He acknowledged that inattacking it he had "been barking against the vain imaginations of carnalthoughts. " Still, he found great difficulty in getting free of all hisManichean prejudices. The problem of Evil remained inexplicable for him, apart from Manichee teachings. God could not be the author of evil. Thistruth admitted, he went on from it to think, against his former masters, that nothing is bad in itself--bad because it has within it a corruptingprinciple. On the contrary, all things are good, though in varying degrees. The apparent defects of creation, perceived by our senses, blend intothe harmony of the whole. The toad and the viper have their place in theoperation of a perfectly arranged world. But physical ill is not the onlyill; there is also the evil that we do and the evil that others do us. Crime and pain are terrible arguments against God. Now the Christianshold that the first is the product solely of the human will, of libertycorrupted by original sin, and that the other is permitted by God as ameans of purifying souls. Of course, this was a solution, but it implied abelief in the dogmas of the Fall and of the Redemption. Augustin did notaccept them yet. He was too proud to recognize an impaired will and theneed of a Saviour. "My puffed-out face, " he says, "closed up my eyes. " Nevertheless he had taken a great step in rejecting the fundamental dogmaof Manicheeism--the double Principle of good and evil. Henceforth forAugustin there exists only one Principle, unique and incorruptible--theGood, which is God. But his view of this divine substance is stillquite materialistic, to such an extent is he governed by his senses. Inhis thought, it is corporeal, spatial, and infinite. He pictures it asa kind of limitless sea, wherein is a huge sponge bathing the worldthat it pervades throughout. .. . He was at this point, when one of hisacquaintances, "a man puffed up with immense vanity, " gave him some ofthe Dialogues of Plato, translated into Latin by the famous rhetoricianVictorinus Afer. It is worth noting, as we pass, that Augustin, nowthirty-two years old, a rhetorician by profession and a philosopher bytaste, had not yet read Plato. This is yet another proof to what extent theinstruction of the ancients was oral, resembling in this the Mussulmans'instruction of to-day. Up to now, he had only known Plato by hearsay. Heread him, and it was as a revelation. He learned that a reality could existwithout diffusion through space. He saw God as unextended and yet infinite. The sense of the divine Soul was given to him. Then the primordialnecessity of the Mediator or Word was borne in upon his mind. It is theWord which has created the world. It is through the Word that the world, and God, and all things, including ourselves, become comprehensible to us. What an astonishment! Plato corresponded with St. John! "In the beginningwas the Word"--_in principio erat verbum_--said the fourth Gospel. Butit was not only an Evangelist that Augustin discovered in the Platonistdialogues, it was almost all the essential part of the doctrine of Christ. He saw plainly the profound differences, but for the moment he was struckby the resemblances, and they carried him away. What delighted him, firstof all, is the beauty of the world, constructed after His own likeness bythe Demiurgus. God is Beauty; the world is fair as He who made it. Thismetaphysical vision entranced Augustin; his whole heart leaped towardsthis ineffably beautiful Divinity. Carried away by enthusiasm he cries: "Imarvelled to find that now I loved Thee, O my God, and not a phantasm inThy stead. If I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee, _I was swept up toThee by Thy beauty_. " But such an abandonment could not endure: "I was not yet in a state toenjoy Thee. " There is Augustin's main objection to Platonism. He feltthat instead of touching God, of enjoying Him, he would be held by purelymental conceptions, that he would be always losing his way among thephantasmagoria of idealism. What was the use of giving up the illusoryrealities of the senses, if it were not to get hold of more _solid_realities? Though his intelligence, his poet's imagination, might beattracted by the glamour of Platonism, his heart was not satisfied. "It isone thing, " he says, "from some wooded height to behold the land of peace, another thing to march thither along the high road. " St. Paul it was who shewed him this road. He began to read the _Epistles_carefully, and the more he read of them the more he became aware of theabyss which separates philosophy from wisdom--the one which marshals theideas of things, the other which, ignoring ideas, leads right up to thedivine realities whereon the others are suspended. The Apostle taughtAugustin that it was not enough to get a glimpse of God through the crystalof concepts, but that it is necessary to be united to Him in spirit and intruth--to possess and enjoy Him. And to unite itself to this Good, the soulmust get itself into a fit state for such a union, purify and cure itselfof all its fleshly maladies, descry its place in the world and hold to it. Necessity of repentance, of humility, of the contrite and humble heart. Only the contrite and humble heart shall see God. "The broken heart shallbe cured, " says the Scripture, "but the heart of the proud man shall beshattered. " So Augustin, the intellectual, had to change his methods, and he felt that this change was right. If the writer who wants to writebeautiful things ought to put himself beforehand into some sort of a stateof grace, wherein not only vile actions, but unworthy thoughts becomeimpossible, the Christian, in like manner, must cleanse and preparehis inward eye to perceive the divine verities. Augustin grasped thisthought in reading St. Paul. But what, above all, appealed to him in the_Epistles_, was their paternal voice, the mildness and graciousness hiddenbeneath the uncultivated roughness of the phrases. He was charmed by this. How different from the philosophers! "Those celebrated pages have no traceof the pious soul, the tears of repentance, nor of Thy sacrifice, O my God, nor of the troubled spirit. .. . No one there hearkened to the Christ thatcalleth, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour!' They think it scorn to learnfrom Him, because He is meek and lowly of heart. For Thou hast hidden thesethings from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. " But it is not much to bend: what is, above all, requisite for him is to getrid of his passions. Now Augustin's passions were old friends. How couldhe part with them? He lacked courage for this heroic treatment. Just thinkof what a young man of thirty-two is. He is always thinking of women. Lustholds him by the entanglements of habit, and he takes pleasure in theimpurity of his heart. When, yielding to the exhortations of the Apostle, he tried to shape his conduct to his new way of thinking, the old friendstrooped to beg of him not to do anything of the kind. "They pulled me, " hesays, "by the coat of my flesh, and they murmured in my ear--What, are youleaving us? Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultrain aeternum?_. .. And from that instant, the thing you well know, and stillanother thing, will be forbidden you for ever--for eternity. .. . " Eternity! Dread word. Augustin shook with fear. Then, calming himself, hesaid to them: "I know you; I know you too well! You are Desire withouthope, the Gulf without soundings that nothing can fill up. I have sufferedenough because of you. " And the anguished dialogue continued: "Whatmatters that! If the only possible happiness for you is to suffer on ouraccount, to fling your body into the voracious gulf, without end, withouthope!"--"Let cowards act so!. .. For me there is another happiness thanyours. There is _something else_: I am certain. " Then the friends, puta little out of countenance by this convinced tone, muttered in a lowervoice: "Still, just suppose you are losing this wretched pleasure fora phantasm still more empty. .. . Besides, you are mistaken about yourstrength. You cannot--no, you never can exist without us. " They had touchedthe galling spot: Augustin knew his weakness only too well. And his burningimagination presented to him with extraordinary lucidity these pleasureswhich he could not do without. They were not only embracements, but alsothose trifles, those superfluous nothings, "those light pleasantnesseswhich make us fond of life. " The perfidious old friends continued towhisper: "Wait a bit yet! The things you despise have a charm of theirown; they bring even no small sweetness. You ought not to cut yourself offlight-heartedly, for it would be shameful to return to them afterwards. "He passed in review all the things he was going to give up; he saw themshine before him tinted in the most alluring colours: gaming, elaborateentertainments, music, song, perfumes, books, poetry, flowers, the coolnessof forests (he remembered the woods about Thagaste, and his hunting dayswith Romanianus)--in a word, all that he had ever cared about, even to"that freshness of the light, so kind to human eyes. " Augustin was not able to decide in this conflict between temptation and thedecree of his conscience, and he became desperate. His will, enfeebled bysin, was unable to struggle against itself. And so he continued to endurelife and to be "devoured by time. " The life of that particular period, if it was endurable for quiet folkwho were careful to have nothing to do with politics--this life of theEmpire near its end, could be nothing but a scandalous spectacle for anhonest-minded and high-souled man such as Augustin. It ought to havedisgusted him at once with remaining in the world. At Milan, connected ashe was with the Court, he was in a good position to see how much basenessand ferocity may spring from human avarice and ambition. If the presentwas hideous, the future promised to be sinister. The Roman Empire no longerexisted save in name. Foreigners, come from all the countries of theMediterranean, plundered the provinces under its authority. The army wasalmost altogether in the hands of the Barbarians. They were Gothic tribuneswho kept order outside the basilica where Ambrose had closed himself inwith his people to withstand the order of the Empress Justina, who wishedto hand over this church to the Arians. Levantine eunuchs domineered overthe exchequer-clerks in the palace, and officials of all ranks. All thesepeople plundered where they could. The Empire, even grown feeble, wasalways an excellent machine to rule men and extract gold from nations. Accordingly, ambitious men and adventurers, wherever they came from, triedfor the Purple: it was still worth risking one's skin for. Even more thanthe patriots (and there were still some very energetic men of this sortwho were overcome with grief at the state of things), the men of rapineand violence were interested in maintaining the Empire. The Barbariansthemselves desired to be included, so that they might pillage it with moreimpunity. As for the emperors, even sincere Christians, they were obliged to becomeabominable tyrants to defend their constantly threatened lives. Never wereexecutions more frequent or more cruel than at this time. At Milan theymight have shewn Augustin, hard by the Imperial sleeping apartments, thecave where the preceding Emperor, choleric Valentinian, kept two bears, "Bit of Gold" and "Innocence, " who were his rapid executioners. He fed themwith the flesh of those condemned to die. Possibly "Bit of Gold" was stillliving. "Innocence"--observe the atrocious irony of this name--had beenrestored to the liberty of her native forests, as a reward for her good andloyal services. Was Augustin, who still thought of becoming an official, going to mix inwith this lot of swindlers, assassins, and brute beasts? As he studied themnear at hand, he felt his goodwill grow weak. Like all those who belongto worn-out generations, he must have been disgusted with action and thevillainies it involves. Just before great catastrophes, or just after, there is an epidemic of black pessimism which freezes delicate souls. Besides, he was ill--a favourable circumstance for a disappointed man if heentertains thoughts of giving up the world. In the fogs of Milan his chestand throat became worse and worse. And then it is likely enough that he wasnot succeeding better as rhetorician than he had at Rome. It was a kindof fatality for all Africans. However great their reputation in their owncountry, that was the end of it as soon as they crossed the sea. Apuleius, the great man of Carthage, had tried the experiment to his cost. They hadmade fun of his guttural Carthaginian pronunciation. The same kind of thinghappened to Augustin. The Milanese turned his African accent into ridicule. He even found among them certain purists who discovered solecisms in hisphrases. But these scratches at his self-respect, this increasing disgust of menand things, were small matters compared to what was going on within him. Augustin had a sick soul. The forebodings he had always been subject towere now become the suffering of every moment. At certain times he wasassailed by those great waves of sadness which unfurl all of a sudden fromthe depths of the unknown. In such minutes we believe that the whole worldis hurling itself against us. The great wave rolled him over; he got upagain all wounded. And he felt stretch forth in him a new will which wasnot his own, under which the other, the will to sin, struggled. It waslike the approach of an invisible being whose contact overcame him with ananguish which was full of pleasure. This being wanted to open out withinhim, but the weight of his old sins prevented. Then his soul cried out inpain. In those moments, what a relief it was to let himself float on thecanticles of the Church! The liturgical chants were then something new inthe West. It was in the very year we are dealing with that St. Ambrosestarted the custom in the Milanese basilicas. The childhood of our hymns! One cannot think about that without beingmoved. One envies Augustin for having heard them in their spring freshness. These lovely musics, which were to sound during so many centuries, andstill soar against the vaults of cathedrals, were leaving the nest for thefirst time. We cannot think that a day will come when they will fold theirwings and fall silent. Since human bodies, temples of the Holy Ghost, willlive again in glory, one would like to believe with Dante that the hymns, temples of the Word, are likewise immortal, and that they will still beheard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory thebewailing souls continue to sing the _Te lucis ante terminum_, even as inthe star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up thetriumphant notes of the _Magnificat_. .. . Even on those who have lost the faith, the power of these hymns isirresistible. "If you knew, " said Renan, "the charm that the Barbarianmagicians knew how to put into their canticles. When I remember them, myheart melts. " The heart of Augustin, who had not yet the faith, melted tooin hearing them: "How I have cried, my God, over the hymns and canticleswhen the sweet sound of the music of Thy Church thrilled my soul! As themusic flowed into my ears, and Thy truth trickled into my heart, the tideof devotion swelled high within me, and the tears ran down, and there wasgladness in those tears. " His heart cast off its heaviness, while his mindwas shaken by the heavenly music. Augustin loved music passionately. Atthis time he conceived God as the Great Musician of the spheres; and soonhe will write that "we are a strophe in a poem. " At the same time, thevivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipidmetaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depthsof him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then theaffectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: _Deus, Deus meus!_--"OGod! O _my_ God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantomthat withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actualpossession of the loving soul. He leant over His poor scarred creature, took him in His arms, and comforted him like a kind father. Augustin wept with tenderness and ecstasy, but also with despair. He weptupon himself. He saw that he had not the courage to be happy with the onlypossible happiness. What, indeed, was he seeking, unless it were to capturethis "blessed life" which he had pursued so long? What he had tried to getout of all his loves was the complete gift of his soul--to realize himselfcompletely. Now, this completeness of self is only in God--_in Deo salutarimeo_. The souls we have wounded are in unison with us, and with themselves, only in God. .. . And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with itsmost enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of LivingWater; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbingerof peace. .. . But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a littleyet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? _Non erimus tecum ultra inaeternum?_. .. " What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how terrifyingfor a timid soul! They fell, heavy as bronze, on the soul of Augustin. An end had to be put to it somehow. What was needed was some one who wouldforce him out of his indecision. Instinctively, led by that mysterious willwhich he felt had arisen within him, he went to see, and consult in hisdistress, an old priest named Simplicianus, who had converted or directedBishop Ambrose in his young days. No doubt Augustin spoke to him of what hehad lately been reading, and particularly of his Platonist studies, and ofall the efforts he made to enter the communion of Christ. He acknowledgedthat he was convinced, but he could not bend to the practice of theChristian life. Then, very skilfully, as one artful in differentiatingsouls, perceiving that vanity was not yet dead in Augustin, Simplicianusoffered him as an example the very translator of those Platonic books whichhe had just been reading so enthusiastically--that famous Victorinus Afer, that orator so learned and admired, who had his statue in the Roman Forum. Because of some remains of philosophical pride, and also from fear ofoffending his friends among the Roman aristocracy, who were still almostaltogether pagan, Victorinus was a Christian only in his head. In vainSimplicianus pointed out to him how illogical his conduct was. But suddenlyand unexpectedly he decided. The day of the baptism of the catechumens, this celebrated man mounted the platform set up in the basilica for theprofession of faith of the newly converted, and there, like the meanest ofthe faithful, he delivered his profession before all the assembled people. That was a dramatic stroke. The crowd, jubilant over this fine performance, cheered the neophyte. And on all sides they shouted: "Victorinus!Victorinus!" Augustin listened to this little story, whereof all the details were sohappily chosen to act on an imagination like his:--the statue in theRoman Forum; the platform from the height of which the orator had spokena language so new and unexpected; the exulting shouts of the crowd:"Victorinus! Victorinus!" Already he saw himself in the same position. There he was in the basilica, on the platform, in presence of BishopAmbrose; he too repeated his profession of faith, and the people of Milanclapped their hands--"Augustin! Augustin!" But can a humble and contriteheart thus take pleasure in human adulation? If Augustin did become aconvert, it would be entirely for God and before God. Very quickly he putaside the temptation. .. . Nevertheless, this example, coming from so exalteda man, made a very deep and beneficial impression. He looked upon it as aprovidential sign, a lesson in courage which concerned him personally. Some time after that, he received a visit from a fellow-countryman, acertain Pontitianus, who had a high position in the Imperial household. Augustin happened to be alone in the house with his friend Alypius. Theysat down to talk, and by chance the visitor noticed the Epistles of St. Paul lying on a table for playing games. This started the conversation. Pontitianus, who was a Christian, praised the ascetic life, and especiallythe wonders of holiness wrought by Antony and his companions in theEgyptian deserts. This subject was in the air. In Catholic circles atRome, they spoke of little else than these Egyptian solitaries, and ofthe number, growing larger and larger, of those who stripped themselvesof their worldly goods to live in utter renunciation. What was the goodof keeping these worldly goods, that the avarice of Government taxationconfiscated so easily, and that the Barbarians watched covetously fromafar! The brutes who came down from Germany would get hold of them sooneror later. And even supposing one might save them, retain an ever-uncertainenjoyment of them, was the life of the time really worth the trouble ofliving? There was nothing more to hope for the Empire. The hour of thegreat desolation was at hand. .. . Pontitianus, observing the effect of his words on his hearers, was ledto tell them a quite private adventure of his own. He was at Trèves, inattendance on the Court. Well, one afternoon while the Emperor was atthe circus, he and three of his friends, like himself attached to thehousehold, went for a stroll beyond the city walls. Two of them partedfrom the others and went off into the country, and there they came upona hut where dwelt certain hermits. They went in, and found a book--_TheLife of St. Antony_. They read in it; and for them that was a conversionthunder-striking, instantaneous. The two courtiers resolved to join thesolitaries there and then, and they never went back to the Palace. And theywere betrothed!. .. The tone of Pontitianus as he recalled this conscience-drama which hehad witnessed, betrayed a strange emotion which gradually took hold ofAugustin. His guest's words resounded in him like the blows of a clapper ina bell. He saw himself in the two courtiers of Trèves. He too was tired ofthe world, he too was betrothed. Was he going to do as the Emperor--remainin the circus taken up with idle pleasures, while others took the road tothe sole happiness? When Pontitianus was gone, Augustin was in a desperate state. The repentantsoul of the two courtiers had passed into his. His will uprose in grievousconflict and tortured itself. He seized Alypius roughly by the arm andcried out to him in extraordinary excitement: "What are we about? Yes, I say, what are we about? Did you not hear? Simplemen arise and take Heaven by violence, and we with all our heartlesslearning--look how we are wallowing in flesh and blood!" Alypius stared at him, stupefied. "The truth is, " adds Augustin, "that Iscarcely knew what I said. My face, my eyes, my colour, and the change inmy voice expressed my meaning much better than my words. " If he guessedfrom this upheaval of his whole frame how close at hand was the heavenlyvisitation, all he felt at the moment was a great need to weep, and hewanted solitude to weep freely. He went down into the garden. Alypius, feeling uneasy, followed at a distance, and in silence sat down beside himon the bench where he had paused. Augustin did not even notice that hisfriend was there. His agony of spirit began again. All his faults, all hisold stains came once more to his mind, and he grew furious against hiscowardly feebleness as he felt how much he still clung to them. Oh, to tearhimself free from all these miseries--to finish with them once for all!. .. Suddenly he sprang up. It was as if a gust of the tempest had struck him. He rushed to the end of the garden, flung himself on his knees under afig-tree, and with his forehead pressed against the earth he burst intotears. Even as the olive-tree at Jerusalem which sheltered the last watchof the Divine Master, the fig-tree of Milan saw fall upon its roots a sweatof blood. Augustin, breathless in the victorious embrace of Grace, panted:"How long, how long?. .. To-morrow and to-morrow?. .. Why not now? Why notthis hour make an end of my vileness?. .. " Now, at this very moment a child's voice from the neighbouring house beganrepeating in a kind of chant: "_Take and read, take and read_. " Augustinshuddered. What was this refrain? Was it a nursery-rhyme that the littlechildren of the countryside used to sing? He could not recollect it; he hadnever heard it before. .. . Immediately, as upon a divine command, he rose tohis feet and ran back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for he hadleft St. Paul's Epistles lying there. He opened the book, and the passageon which his eyes first fell was this: _Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof_. .. . Theflesh!. .. The sacred text aimed at him directly--at him, Augustin, still sofull of lust! This command was the answer from on high. .. . He put his finger between the leaves, closed the volume. His frenzy hadpassed away. A great peace was shed upon him--it was all over. With a calmface he told Alypius what had happened, and without lingering he went intoMonnica's room to tell her also. The Saint was not surprised. It was longnow since she had been told, "Where I am, there shalt thou be also. " Butshe gave way to an outburst of joy. Her mission was done. Now she mightsing her canticle of thanksgiving and enter into God's peace. Meanwhile, the good Alypius, always circumspect and practical, had openedthe book again and shewn his friend what followed the verse, for Augustin, in his excitement, had neglected to read further. The Apostle said, "_Himthat is weak in the faith receive ye_. " This also applied to Augustin. That was only too certain: his new faith was still very unsteady. Let notpresumption blind him! Yes, no doubt with all his soul he desired to be aChristian. It now remained for him to become one. THE FOURTH PART THE HIDDEN LIFE Fac me, Pater, quaerere te. "Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father. " _Soliloquies_, I, i. I THE LAST SMILE OF THE MUSE Now that Augustin had been at last touched by grace, was he after allgoing to make a sensational conversion like his professional brother, thecelebrated Victorinus? He knew well enough that there is a good example set by these noisyconversions which works on a vast number of people. And however "contriteand humble" his heart might be, he was quite aware that in Milan hewas an important personage. What excitement, if he were to resign hisprofessorship on the ground that he wished to spend the rest of his life inthe ascetic way of the Christians!. .. But he preferred to avoid the scandalon one side, and the loud praise on the other. God alone and some very dearfriends should witness his repentance. There were now hardly twenty days before the vacation. He would be patienttill then. Thus, the parents of his pupils would not have any ground toreproach him for leaving them before the end of term, and as his healthwas getting worse, he would have a good excuse to give up his post. Thedampness of the climate had given him a sort of chronic bronchitis whichthe summer had not cured. He had difficulty in breathing; his voice wasmuffled and thin--so much so, that he began to think his lungs wereattacked. Augustin's health really needed care. This was a quite goodenough reason to interrupt his lectures. Having fulfilled his professionalduties to the very end--and he assures us that it took some courage--heleft the professorial chair with the declared intention of never occupyingit again. Here, then, he is free from all worldly ties. From now on he can preparehimself for baptism in silence and retreat. But still he must live somehow!Augustin had more souls depending on him than ever: his son, his mother, his brother, his cousins--a heavy burthen which he had been strugglingunder for a long time. It is probable that once more Romanianus, who wasstill in Milan, came to his assistance. It will be remembered that theMæcenas of Thagaste had taken up warmly the plan of a lay monastery whichAugustin and his friends had lost their heads over, and he had promisedto subscribe a large sum. Augustin's retreat was a first step towardsrealizing this plan in a new shape. Romanianus, no doubt, approved ofit. In any case, he asked Augustin to keep on giving lessons to his sonLicentius. Another young man, Trygetius, begged for the same favour. Augustin therefore did not intend to give up his employment altogether. Hehad changed, for the present at least, from a Government professor into aprivate one. This meant that he had a certain living. All he wanted now was a shelter. A friend, a colleague, the grammarian Verecundus, graciously offered himthis. Verecundus thus repaid a favour which Augustin had quite recentlydone him. It was at Augustin's request that Nebridius, who was a friend ofboth, agreed to take over the classes of the grammarian, who was obligedto go away. Although rich, full of talent, and very eager for peace andsolitude, Nebridius, simply out of good-nature, was willing to take theplace of Verecundus in his very modest employment. One cannot too muchadmire the generosity and kindliness of these ancient and Christianmanners. In those days, friendship knew nothing of our narrow and shabbyegoisms. Now Verecundus owned a country house just outside Milan, at Cassicium. Hesuggested to Augustin to spend the vacation there, and even to live therepermanently with all his people, on condition of looking after the propertyand keeping it up. Attempts have been made to find traces of this hospitable dwelling wherethe future monk of Thagaste and Hippo bade farewell to the world. Cassiciumhas disappeared. The imagination is free to rebuild it fancifully in anypart of the rich country which lies about Milan. Still, if the youthfulLicentius has not yielded too much to metaphor in the verses wherein herecalls to Augustin "Departed suns among Italian mountain-heights, " it islikely that the estate of Verecundus lay upon those first mountain-slopeswhich roll into the Brianza range. Even to-day, the rich Milanese havetheir country houses among those hills. To Augustin and his companions this flourishing Lombardy must have seemedanother promised land. The country, wonderfully fertile and cultivated, is one orchard, where fruit trees cluster, and, in all ways, deep streamswind, slow-flowing and stocked with fish. Everywhere is the tremor ofrunning water--inconceivably fresh music for African ears. A scent of mintand aniseed; fields with grass growing high and straight in which youplunge up to the knees. Here and there, deeply engulfed little valleyswith their bunches of green covert, slashed with the rose plumes of thelime trees and the burnished leaves of the hazels, and where already thenorthern firs lift their black needles. Far off, blended in one violetmass, the Alps, peak upon peak, covered with snow; and nearer in view, sheer cliffs, jutting fastnesses, ploughed through with black gorges whichmake flare out plainer the bronze-gold of their slopes. Not far off, theenchanted lakes slumber. It seems that an emblazonment fluctuates fromtheir waters, and writhing above the crags which imprison them driftsathwart a sky sometimes a little chill--Leonardo's pensive sky of shadowedamethyst--again of a flushed blue, whereupon float great clouds, silkenand ruddy, as in the backgrounds of Veronese's pictures. The beauty of thelight lightens and beautifies the over-heavy opulence of the land. And wherever the country house of Verecundus may be placed, some bit ofthis triumphal landscape will be found. As for the house itself, Augustinhas said enough about it for us to see it fairly well. It was no doubt oneof those old rustic buildings, inhabited only some few months of the year, in the warmest season, and for the rest of the time given over to thefrolics of mice and rats. Without any pretence to architectural form, ithad been enlarged and renovated simply for the greater convenience of thosewho lived there. There was no attempt at symmetry; the main door was not inthe middle of the building, and there was another door on one of the sides. The sole luxury of this country house was perhaps the bath-houses. Thesebaths, however simple they might be, nevertheless reminded Augustin ofthe decoration of gymnasiums. Does this mean that he found there richpavements, mosaics, and statues? These were quite usual things in Romanvillas. The Italians have always had, at all periods, a great fondnessfor statues and mosaics. Not very particular about the quality, they madeup for it by the quantity. And when they could not treat themselves tothe real thing, it was good enough to give themselves the make-believe inpainting. I can imagine easily enough Verecundus' house, painted in frescofrom top to bottom, inside and out, like those houses at Pompeii, or themodern Milanese villas. There was no attempt at ornamental gardens at Cassicium. The surroundingsmust have been kitchen-garden, grazing-land, or ploughed fields, as ina farm. A meadow--not in the least the lawns found in front of a largecountry house--lay before the dwelling, which was protected from sun andwind by clumps of chestnut trees. There, stretched on the grass under theshade of one of these spreading trees, they chatted gaily while listeningto the broken song of the brook, as it flowed under the windows of thebaths. They lived very close to nature, almost the life of field-tillers. The whole charm of Cassicium consisted in its silence, its peace, and, above all, its fresh air. Augustin's tired lungs breathed there a purer airthan in Milan, where the humid summer heat is crushing. His soul, yearningfor retirement, discovered a retreat here in harmony with his new desires, a country solitude of which the Virgilian grace still appealed to hisliterary imagination. The days he passed there were days of blessedness forhim. Long afterwards he was deeply moved when he recalled them, and in anoutburst of gratitude towards his host, he prayed God to pay him his debt. "Thou wilt recompense him, O Lord, on the day of the resurrection of thejust. .. . For that country house at Cassicium where we found shelter in Theefrom the burning summer of our time, Thou wilt repay to Verecundus thecoolness and evergreen shade of Thy paradise. .. . " That was an unequalled moment in Augustin's life. Following immediatelyupon the mental crisis which had even worn out his body, he seems to beexperiencing the pleasure of convalescence. He slackens, and, as he sayshimself, he rests. His excitement is quenched, but his faith remainsas firm as ever. With a cairn and supremely lucid mind he judges hiscondition; he sees clearly all that he has still to do ere he becomes athorough Christian. First, he must grow familiar with the Scripture, solvecertain urgent questions--that of the soul, for example, its nature andorigin--which possessed him just then. Then he must change his conduct, alter his ways of thought, and, if one may so speak, disinfect his mindstill all saturated with pagan influences: a delicate work--yes, and anuneasy, at times even painful, which would take more than one day. After twenty centuries of Christianity, and in spite of our claim tounderstand all things, we do not yet realize very well what an abysslies between us and paganism. When by chance we come upon pagan tracesin certain primitive regions of the South of Europe, we get muddled, andattribute to Catholicism what is but a survival of old abolished customs, so far from us that we cannot recognize them any more. Augustin, on thecontrary, was right next to them. When he strolled over the fields andthrough the woods around Cassicium, the Fauns and woodland Nymphs of theold mythology haunted his memory, and all but stood before his eyes. Hecould not take a walk without coming upon one of their chapels, or strikingagainst a boundary-mark still all greasy from the oil with which thesuperstitious peasants had drenched it. Like himself, the old pagan landhad not yet quite put on the Christ of the new era. He was like that HermesCriophorus, who awkwardly symbolized the Saviour on the walls of theCatacombs. Even as the Bearer of Rams changed little by little into theGood Shepherd, the Bishop of Hippo emerged slowly from the rhetoricianAugustin. He became aware of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium--that autumnheavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised thegreat winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by theroadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and theslowed water ceased to sing. Augustin strained his ears for it. His soulalso was blocked, choked up by all the deposit of his passions. But he knewthat soon the chant of his new life would begin in triumphal fashion, andhe said over to himself the words of the psalm: _Cantate mihi canticumnovum_--"Sing unto me a new song. " Unfortunately for Augustin, his soul and its salvation was not his onlycare at Cassicium: he had a thousand others. So it shall be with himthroughout his life. Till the very end he will long for solitude, for thelife in God, and till the end God will charge him with the care of hisbrethren. This great spirit shall live above all by charity. At the house of Verecundus he was not only the head, but he had a completecountry estate to direct and supervise. Probably all the guests in thehouse helped him. They divided the duties. The good Alypius, who was usedto business and versed in the twisted ways of the law, took over theforeign affairs--the buying and selling, probably the accounts also. He wascontinually on the road to Milan. Augustin attended to the correspondence, and every morning appointed their work to the farm-labourers. Monnicalooked after the household, no easy work in a house where nine sat down totable every day. But the Saint fulfilled her humble duties with touchingkindness and forgetfulness of self: "She took care of us, " says Augustin, "as if we had all been her children, and she served us as if each of us hadbeen her father. " Let us look a little at these "children" of Monnica. Besides Alypius, whomwe know already, there was the young Adeodatus, the child of sin--"my sonAdeodatus, whose gifts gave promise of great things, unless my love forhim betrays me. " Thus speaks his father. This little boy was, it seems, a prodigy, as shall be the little Blaise Pascal later: "His intelligencefilled me with awe"--_horrori mihi erat illud ingenium_--says the fatheragain. What is certain is that he had a soul like an angel. Some sayingsof his have been preserved by Augustin. They are fragrant as a bunch oflilies. The other members of the family are nearer the earth. Navigius, Augustin'sbrother, an excellent man of whom we know nothing save that he had a badliver--the icterus of the African colonist--and that on this account heabstained from sweetmeats. Rusticus and Lastidianus, the two cousins, persons as shadowy as the "supers" in a tragedy. Finally, Augustin'spupils, Trygetius and Licentius. The first, who had lately served some timein the army, was passionately fond of history, "like a veteran. " Althoughhis master in some of his Dialogues has made him his interlocutor, hischaracter remains for us undeveloped. With Licentius it is different. Thisson of Romanianus, the Mæcenas of Thagaste, was Augustin's beloved pupil. It is easy to make that out. All the phrases he devotes to Licentius have awarmth of tone, a colour and relief which thrill. This Licentius comes before us as the type of the spoiled child, the son ofa wealthy family, capricious, vain, presuming, unabashed, never hesitatingif he sees a chance to have a joke with his master. Forgetful, besides, prone to sudden fancies, superficial, and rather blundering. With allthat, the best boy in the world--a bad head, but a good heart. He was afrank pagan, and I believe remained a pagan all his life, in spite of theremonstrances of Augustin and those of the gentle Paulinus of Nola, wholectured him in prose and verse. A great eater and a fine drinker, hefound himself obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table. But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating anddrinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained--so hismaster says--all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion forversifying: "He is an almost perfect poet, " wrote Augustin to Romanianus. The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the fatherof a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor. At Cassicium, under Augustin's indulgent eyes, the pupil turned into verse the romanticadventure of Pyramus and Thisbe. He declaimed bits of it to the guestsin the house, for he had a fine loud voice. Then he flung aside theunfinished poem and suddenly fell in love with Greek tragedies of which, as it happened, he understood nothing at all, though this did not preventhim from boring everybody he met with them. Another day it was the Churchmusic, then quite new, which flung him into enthusiasm. That day they heardLicentius singing canticles from morning till night. In connection with this, Augustin relates with candid freedom an anecdotewhich to-day needs the indulgence of the reader to make it acceptable. Asit gives light upon that half-pagan, half-Christian way of life which wasstill Augustin's, I will repeat it in all its plainness. It happened, then, one evening after dinner, that Licentius went out andtook his way to a certain mysterious retreat, and there he suddenly begansinging this verse of the Psalm: "Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, causeThy face to shine; and we shall be saved. " As a matter of fact, he hadhardly sung anything else for a long time. He kept on repeating this verseover and over again, as people do with a tune they have just picked up. Butthe pious Monnica, who heard him, could not tolerate the singing of suchholy words in such a place. She spoke sharply to the offender. Upon thisthe young scatter-brains answered rather flippantly: "Supposing, good mother, that an enemy had shut me up in that place--do youmean to say that God wouldn't have heard me just the same?" The next day he thought no more about it, and when Augustin reminded him, he declared that he felt no remorse. "As far as I am concerned, " replied the excellent master, "I am not in theleast shocked by it. .. . The truth is, that neither that place, which hasso much scandalized my mother, nor the darkness of night, is altogetherinappropriate to this canticle. For whence, think you, do we implore Godto drag us, so that we may be converted and gaze upon His face? Is it notfrom that jakes of the senses wherein our souls are plunged, and from thatdarkness of which the error is around us?. .. " And as they were discussing that day the order established by Providence, Augustin made it a pretext to give a little edifying lecture to his pupil. Having heard the sermon to the end, the sharp Licentius put in with slymaliciousness: "I say, what a splendid arrangement of events to shew me that nothinghappens except in the best way, and for our great good!" This reply gives us the tone of the conversation between Augustin andhis pupils. Nevertheless, however free and merry the talks might be, thepurpose was always instructive, and it was always substantial. Let us notforget that the Milanese rhetorician is still a professor. The best part ofhis days was devoted to these two youths who had been put under his charge. As soon as he had settled the business of the farm, talked to the peasants, and given his orders to the workmen, he fell back upon his business ofrhetorician. In the morning they went over Virgil's _Eclogues_ together. Atnight they discussed philosophy. When the weather was fine they walked inthe fields, and the discussion continued under the shade of the chestnuttrees. If it rained, they took refuge in the withdrawing-room adjoining thebaths. Beds were there, cushions, soft chairs convenient for talking, andthe equal temperature from the vapour-baths close at hand was good forAugustin's bronchial tubes. There is no stiffness in these dialogues, nothing which smacks of theschool. The discussion starts from things which they had under the eyes, often from some slight accidental happening. One night when Augustin couldnot sleep--he often suffered from insomnia--the dispute began in bed, forthe master and his pupils slept in the same room. Lying there in the dark, he listened to the broken murmur of the stream. He was trying to think outan explanation of the pauses in the sound, when Licentius shifted under thebedclothes, and reaching out for a piece of stick lying on the floor, herapped with it on the foot of the bed to frighten the mice. So he was notasleep either, nor Trygetius, who was stirring about in his bed. Augustinwas delighted: he had two listeners. Immediately he put this question: "Whydo those pauses come in the flow of the stream? Do they not follow somesecret law?. .. " They had hit upon a subject for debate. During many daysthey discussed the order of the world. Another time, as they were going into the baths, they stopped to lookat two cocks fighting. Augustin called the attention of the youths "toa certain order full of propriety in all the movements of these fowlsdeprived of reason. " "Look at the conqueror, " said he. "He crows triumphantly. He struts andplumes himself as a proud sign of victory. And now look at the beaten one, without voice, his neck unfeathered, a look of shame. All that has I knownot what beauty, in harmony with the laws of nature. .. . " New argument in favour of order: the debate of the night before is startedrolling again. For us, too, it is well worth while to pause on this little homely scene. It reveals to us an Augustin not only very sensitive to beauty, but veryattentive to the sights of the world surrounding him. Cockfights were stillvery popular in this Roman society at the ending of the Empire. For a longtime sculptors had found many gracious subjects in the sport. Reading thispassage of Augustin's, one recalls, among other similar designs, thatfuneral urn at the Lateran upon which are represented two little boys, onecrying over his beaten cock, while the other holds his tenderly in hisarms and kisses it--the cock that won, identified by the crown held in itsspurs. Augustin is always very close to these humble realities. Every momentoutside things start up in the dialogues between the master and hispupils. .. . They are in bed on a rainy night in November. Gradually, a vaguegleam rests on the windows. They ask each other if that can be the moon, orthe break of day. .. . Another time, the sun rises in all its splendour, andthey decide to go into the meadow and sit on the grass. Or else, the skydarkens and lights are brought in. Or again, it is the appearance ofdiligent Alyphis, just come back from Milan. .. . In the same way as he notes these light details in passing, Augustinwelcomes all his guests into his dialogues and admits them to the debate:his mother, his brother, the cousins, Alypius between his businessjourneys, down to the child Adeodatus. He knew the value of ordinary goodsense, the second-sight of a pure heart, or of a pious soul strengthened byprayer. Monnica used often to come into the room when they were arguing, to let them know that dinner was ready, or for something of the kind. Herson asked her to remain. Modestly she shewed her astonishment at such anhonour. "Mother, " said Augustin, "do you not love truth? Then why should I blushto give you a place among us? Even if your love for truth were onlyhalf-hearted, I ought still to receive you and listen to you. How much morethen, since you love it more than you love me, _and I know how much youlove me_. .. . Nothing can separate you from truth, neither fear, nor painof whatever kind it be--no, nor death itself. Do not all agree that thisis the highest stage of philosophy? How can I hesitate after that to callmyself your disciple?" And Monnica, utterly confused by such praise, answered with affectionategruffness: "Stop talking! You have never told bigger lies. " Most of the time these conversations were simply dialectic games in thetaste of the period, games a little pedantic, and fatiguing from subtilty. The boisterous Licentius did not always enjoy himself. He was ofteninattentive; and his master scolded him. But all the same, the masterunderstood how to amuse his two foster-children while he exercised theirintelligence. At the end of one discussion he said to them laughing: "Just at this hour, the sun warns me to put the playthings I had broughtfor the children back in the basket. .. . " Let us remark in passing that this is the last time, before thosecenturies which are coming of universal intellectual silence or aridscholasticism--the last time that high questions will be discussed in thisgraceful light way, and with the same freedom of mind. The tradition begunby Socrates under the plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, is endingwith Augustin under the chestnuts of Cassicium. And yet, however gay and capricious the form, the substance of thesedialogues, "On the Academics, " "On Order, " and "On the Happy Life, " isserious, and even very serious. The best proof of their importance inAugustin's eyes is, that after taking care to have them reported inshorthand, he eventually published them. The _notarii_ attended thesediscussions and let nothing be lost. The rise of the scrivener, of thenotary, dates from this period. The administration of the Lower-Empire wasfrightfully given to scribbling. By contact with it, the Church became sotoo. Let us not press our complaints about it, since this craze for writinghas procured for us, with a good deal of shot-rubbish, some precioushistorical documents. In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures atCassicium have at least the value of shewing us the state of soul of thefuture Bishop of Hippo at a decisive moment of his life. For these _Dialogues_, although they look like school exercises, reveal theintimate thoughts of Augustin on the morrow of his conversion. While heseems to be refuting the Academics, he is fighting the errors from whichhe, personally, had suffered so long. He clarified his new ideal. No; thesearch for truth, without hope of ever reaching it, cannot give happiness. And genuine happiness is only in God. And if a rhythm is to be found inthings, then it is necessary to make the soul rhythmic also and so enableit to contemplate God. It is necessary to still within it the noise of thepassions. Hence, the need of inward reformation, and, at a final analysis, of asceticism. But Augustin knew full well that these truths must be adapted to theweakness of the two lads he was teaching, and also to the common run ofmankind. He has not yet in these years the uncompromising attitude whichere long will give him a sterner virtue--an attitude, however, unceasinglytempered by his charity and by the persistent recollections of his reading. It was now that he shaped the rule of conduct in worldly morals andeducation which the Christian experience of the future will adopt: "If youhave always order in your hearts, " he said to his pupils, "you must returnto your verses. _For a knowledge of liberal sciences, but a controlled andexact knowledge_, forms men who will love the truth. .. . But there are othermen, or, to put it better, other souls, who, although held in the body, aresought for the eternal marriage by the best and fairest of spouses. Forthese souls it is not enough to live; they wish to live happy. .. . But asfor you, go, _meanwhile_, and find your Muses!" "Go and find your Muses!" What a fine saying! How human and how wise! Hereis clearly indicated the double ideal of those who continue to live in theworld according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and ofthose who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He willnever more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewellto the pagan Muse. II THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA They stayed through the winter at Cassicium. However taken up he might beby the work of the estate and the care of his pupils, Augustin devotedhimself chiefly to the great business of his salvation. The _Soliloquies_, which he wrote then, render even the passionate tone ofthe meditations which he perpetually gave way to during his watches andnights of insomnia. He searched for God, moaning: _Fac me, Pater, quærerete_--"Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father. " But still, he sought Him more asa philosopher than as a Christian. The old man in him was not dead. He hadnot quite stripped off the rhetorician or the intellectual. The over-tenderheart remained, which had so much sacrificed to human love. In those ardentdialogues between himself and his reason, it is plain to see that reasonis not quite the mistress. "I love only God and the soul, " Augustin stateswith a touch of presumption. And his reason, which knows him well, answers:"Do you not then love your friends?"--"I love the soul; how thereforeshould I not love them?" What does this phrase, of such exquisitesensibility, and even already so aloof from worldly thoughts--what doesit lack to give forth a sound entirely Christian? Just a slight change ofaccent. He himself began to see that he would do better not to philosophize so muchand to draw nearer the Scripture, in listening to the wisdom of that witha contrite and humble heart. Upon the directions of Ambrose, whose advicehe had asked by letter, he tried to read the prophet Isaiah, becauseIsaiah is the clearest foreteller of the Redemption. He found the book sodifficult that he lost heart, and he put it aside till later. Meanwhile, he had forwarded his resignation as professor of Rhetoric to the Milanmunicipality. Then, when the time was come, he sent to Bishop Ambrosea written confession of his errors and faults, and represented to himhis very firm intention to be baptized. He was quietly baptized on thetwenty-fifth of April, during the Easter season of the year 387, togetherwith his son Adeodatus, and his friend Alypius. Alypius had prepared mostpiously, disciplining himself with the harshest austerities, to the pointof walking barefoot on the frozen soil. So now the solitaries of Cassicium are back in Milan. Augustin's two pupilswere gone. Trygetius doubtless had rejoined the army. Licentius had goneto live in Rome. But another fellow-countryman, an African from Thagaste, Evodius, formerly a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, came to jointhe small group of new converts. Evodius, the future Bishop of Uzalis, inAfrica, and baptized before Augustin, was a man of scrupulous piety andunquestioning faith. He talked of devout subjects with his friend, who, just fresh from baptism, experienced all the quietude of grace. They spokeof the community which St. Ambrose had either founded or organized atthe gates of Milan, and in comparison with a life so austere, Augustinperceived that the life he had led at Cassicium was still stained withpaganism. He must carry out his conversion to the end and live as a hermitafter the manner of Antony and the solitaries of the Thebaid. Then itoccurred to him that he still owned a little property at Thagaste--a houseand fields. There they would settle and live in self-denial like themonks. The purity of the young Adeodatus predestined him to this asceticexistence. As for Monnica, who long since had taken the widow's veil, shehad to make no change in her ways to lead a saintly life in the company ofher son and grandson. It was agreed among them all to go back to Africa, and to start as soon as possible. Thus, just after his baptism, Augustin shews but one desire: to buryhimself in a retreat, to lead a humble and hidden life, divided between thestudy of the Scripture and the contemplation of God. Later on, his enemieswere to accuse him of having become a convert from ambition, in view of thehonours and riches of the episcopate. This is sheer calumny. His conversioncould not have been more sincere, more disinterested--nor more heroiceither: he was thirty-three years old. When we think of all he had lovedand all he gave up, we can only bow the head and bend the knee before thelofty virtue of such an example. In the course of the summer the caravan started and crossed the Apenninesto set sail at Ostia. The date of this exodus has never been made quiteclear. Perhaps Augustin and his companions fled before the hordes of theusurper Maximus, who, towards the end of August, crossed the Alps andmarched on Milan, while the young Valentinian with all his Court tookrefuge at Aquileia. In any case, it was a trying journey, especially in thehot weather. When Monnica arrived she was very enfeebled. At Ostia they hadto wait till a ship was sailing for Africa. Propitious conditions did notoffer every day. At this period, travellers were at the mercy of the sea, of the wind, and of a thousand other circumstances. Time did not count; itwas wasted freely. The ship sailed short distances at a time, skirting thecoasts, where the length of the stay at every point touched depended on themaster. On board these ships--feluccas hardly decked over--if the crossingwas endless and unsafe, it was, above all, most uncomfortable. People werein no hurry to undergo the tortures of it, and spaced them out as muchas possible by frequent stoppages. On account of all these reasons, ourAfricans made a rather long stay at Ostia. They lodged, no doubt, withChristian brethren, hosts of Augustin or Monnica, in a tranquil house farout of earshot of the cosmopolitan crowd which overflowed in the hotels onthe quay. Ostia, situated at the mouth of the Tiber, was both the port andbond-warehouse of Rome. The Government stores-ships landed the African oiland corn there. It was a junction for commerce, the point where immigrantsfrom all parts of the Mediterranean disbarked. To-day there is only lefta wretched little village. But at some distance from this hamlet, theexcavations of archæologists have lately brought to light the remains ofa large town. They have discovered at the entrance a place of burial witharcosol-tombs; and here perhaps the body of St. Monnica was laid. In thisplace of graves they came upon also a beautiful statue injured--a funeralGenius, or a Victory, with large folded wings like those of the Christianangels. Further on, the forum with its shops, the guard-house of thenight-cohort, baths, a theatre, many large temples, arcaded streets pavedwith large flags, warehouses for merchandise. There may still be seen, lining the walls, the holes in which the ends of the amphoræ used to bedropped to keep them upright. All this wreckage gives an idea of a populouscentre where the stir of traffic and shipping was intense. And yet in this noisy town, Augustin and his mother found means to withdrawthemselves and join together in meditation and prayer. Amid this rathervulgar activity, in a noise of trade and seafaring, a mystic scene developswhere the purified love of mother and son gleams upon us as in a light ofapotheosis. They had at Ostia a foretaste, so to speak, of the eternalunion in God. This was in the house where they had come on arrival. Theytalked softly, resting against a window which looked upon the garden. .. . But the scene has been made popular by Ary Scheffer's too well-knownpainting. You remember it: two faces, pale, bloodless, stripped of flesh, in which live only the burning eyes cast upward to the sky--a dense sky, baffling, heavy with all the secrets of eternity. No visible object, nothing, absolutely nothing, distracts them from their contemplation. Thesea itself, although indicated by the painter, almost blends into theblue line of the horizon. Two souls and the sky--there you have the wholesubject. It is living poetry congealed in abstract thought. The attitude of thecharacters, majestically seated, instead of leaning on the window-ledge, has, in Scheffer's picture, I know not what touch of stiffness, of slightlytheatrical. And the general impression is a cold dryness which contrastswith the lyric warmth of the story in the _Confessions_. For my part, I always thought, perhaps on the testimony of the picture, that the window of the house at Ostia opened above the garden in view ofthe sea. The sea, symbol of the infinite, ought to be present--so it seemedto me--at the final conversation between Monnica and Augustin. At Ostiaitself I was obliged to give up this too literary notion; the sea is notvisible there. No doubt at that time the channel was not so silted up as itis to-day. But the coast lies so low, that just hard by the actual mouth ofthe Tiber, the nearness of the sea can only be guessed by the reflection ofthe waves in the atmosphere, a sort of pearly halo, trembling on the edgeof the sky. At present I am inclined to think that the window of the houseat Ostia was very likely turned towards the vast melancholy horizon of the_Agro Romano_. "We passed through, one after another, " says Augustin, "allthe things of a material order, unto heaven itself. " Is it not natural tosuppose that these things of a material order--these shapes of the earthwith its plantations, its rivers, towns, and mountains--were under theireyes? The bleak spectacle which unrolled before their gaze agreed, at allevents, with the disposition of their souls. This great desolate plain has nothing oppressive, nothing which retainsthe eyes upon details too material. The colours about it are pale andslight, as if on the point of swooning away. Immense sterile stretches, fawn-coloured throughout, with here and there shining a little pink, alittle green; gorse, furze-bushes by the deep banks of the river, or a few_boschetti_ with dusty leaves, which feebly stand out upon the blondnessof the soil. To the right, a pine forest. To the left, the undulations ofthe Roman hills expire into an emptiness infinitely sad. Afar, the violetscheme of the Alban mountains, with veiled and dream-like distances, shapeindefinitely against the pearl light, limpid and serene, of the sky. Augustin and Monnica, resting on the window-ledge, looked forth. Doubtlessit was towards evening, at the hour when southern windows are thrown opento the cool after a burning day. They looked forth. "We marvelled, " saysAugustin, "at the beauty of Thy works, O my God!. .. " Rome was back therebeyond the hills, with its palaces, its temples, the gleam of its gildingand its marbles. But the far-off image of the imperial city could notconquer the eternal sadness which rises from the _Agro_. An air of funeralloneliness lay above this plain, ready to be engulfed by the creepingshadows. How easy it was to break free of these vain corporeal appearanceswhich decomposed of themselves! "Then, " Augustin resumes, "we soared withglowing hearts still higher. " (He speaks as if he and his mother were risenwith equal flight to the vision. It is more probable that he was drawnup by Monnica, long since familiar with the ways of the spirit, used tovisions, and to mystic talks with God. .. . ) Where was this God? All thecreatures, questioned by their anguished entreaty, answered: _Quære supernos_--"Seek above us!" They sought; they mounted higher and higher: "Andso we came to our own minds, and passed beyond them into the region ofunfailing plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food oftruth. .. . And as we talked, and we strove eagerly towards this divineregion, _by a leap with the whole force of our hearts, we touched it foran instant_. .. . Then we sighed, we fell back, and left there fastened thefirst fruits of the Spirit, and heard again the babble of our own tongues, this mortal speech wherein each word has a beginning and an ending. " "We fell back!" The marvellous vision had vanished. But a great silence wasabout them, silence of things, silence of the soul. And they said to eachother: "If the tumult of the flesh were hushed; hushed these shadows of earth, sea, sky; suppose this vision endured, and all other far inferior modes ofvision were taken away, and this alone were to ravish the beholder, andabsorb him, and plunge him in mystic joy, so that eternal life might belike this moment of comprehension which has made us sigh with Love--mightnot that be the fulfilment of 'Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'? Ah, when shall this be? Shall it not be, O my God, when we rise again among thedead. .. ?" Little by little they came down to earth. The dying colours of thesunset-tide smouldered into the white mists of the _Agro_. The worldentered into night. Then Monnica, impelled by a certain presentiment, saidto Augustin: "My son, as for me, I find no further pleasure in life. What I am still todo, or why I still linger here, I know not. .. . There was only one thingmade me want to tarry a little longer in this life, that I might see you aChristian and a Catholic before I died. My God has granted me this boon farbeyond what I hoped for. So what am I doing here?" She felt it; her work was done. She had exhausted, as Augustin says, allthe hope of the century--_consumpta spe sæculi_. For her the parting wasnear. This ecstasy was that of one dying, who has raised a corner of theveil, and who no longer belongs to this world. * * * * * And, in fact, five or six days later she fell ill. She had fever. Theclimate of Ostia bred fevers, as it does to-day, and it was alwaysunsanitary on account of all the foreigners who brought in every infectionof the Orient. Furthermore, the weariness of a long journey in summer hadworn out this woman, old before her time. She had to go to bed. Soon shegot worse, and then lost consciousness. They believed she was in the agony. They all came round her bed--Augustin, his brother Navigius, Evodius, thetwo cousins from Thagaste, Rusticus, and Lastidianus. But suddenly sheshuddered, raised herself, and asked in a bewildered way: "Where was I?" Then, seeing the grief on their faces, she knew that she was lost, and shesaid in a steady voice: "You will bury your mother here. " Navigius, frightened by this sight of death, protested with all hisaffection for her: "No. You will get well, mother. You will come home again. You won't die ina foreign land. " She looked at him with sorrowful eyes, as if hurt that he spoke so littlelike a Christian, and turning to Augustin: "See how he talks, " she said. And after a silence, she went on in a firmer voice, as if to impress on hersons her final wishes: "Lay this body where you will, and be not anxious about it. Only I beseechyou, remember me at the altar of God, wherever you are. " That was the supreme renunciation. How could an African woman, so muchattached to her country, agree to be buried in a stranger soil? Pagannotions were still very strong in this community, and the place of burialwas an important consideration. Monnica, like all other widows, had settledupon hers. At Thagaste she had had her place prepared beside her husbandPatricius. And here now she appeared to give that up. Augustin's companionswere astonished at such abnegation. As for himself, he marvelled at thecompleteness of the change worked in his mother's soul by Grace. And as hethought over all the virtues of her life, the strength of her faith--fromthat moment, he had no doubt that she was a saint. She still lingered for some time. Finally, on the ninth day of her illness, she died at the age of fifty-six. Augustin closed her eyes. A great sorrow surged into his heart. And yet hewho was so quick to tears had the courage not to cry. .. . Suddenly a noiseof weeping rose in the room of death: it was the young Adeodatus, wholamented at the sight of the corpse. He sobbed in such a heartbroken waythat those who were there, demoralized by the distress of it, were obligedto rebuke him. This struck Augustin so deeply, that many years afterwardsthe broken sound of this sobbing still haunted his ears. "Methought, " hesays, "that it was my own childish soul which thus broke out in the weepingof my son. " As for him, with the whole effort of his reason strugglingagainst his heart, he only wanted to think of the glory which the sainthad just entered into. His companions felt likewise. Evodius caught up apsalter, and before Monnica's body, not yet cold, he began to chant thePsalm, "My song shall be of mercy and judgment; unto Thee, O Lord, will Ising. " All who were in the house took up the responses. In the meantime, while the layers-out were preparing the corpse for burial, the brethren drew Augustin into another room. His friends and relationsstood round him. He consoled the others and himself. He spoke, as thecustom was, upon the deliverance of the faithful soul and the happinesswhich is promised. They might have imagined that he had no sense of grief, "But in Thy hearing, O my God, where none of them could hear, I was chidingthe softness of my heart, and holding back the tide of sorrow. .. . Alas!well did I know what I was choking down in my heart. " Not even at the church, where the sacrifice was offered for Monnica'ssoul, nor at the cemetery before the coffin, did he weep. From a sense ofChristian seemliness, he feared to scandalize his brethren by imitatingthe desolation of the pagans and of those who die without hope. But thisvery effort that he made to keep back his tears became another cause ofsuffering. The day ended in a black sadness, a sadness he could not shakeoff. It stifled him. Then he remembered the Greek proverb--"The bathdrives away sorrow;" and he determined to go and bathe. He went into the_tepidarium_ and stretched himself out on the hot slab. Useless remedy!"The bitterness of my trouble was not carried from my heart with the sweatthat flowed from my limbs. " The attendants rolled him in warm towels andled him to the resting-couch. Worn out by tiredness and so many emotions, he fell into a heavy sleep. The next day, upon awaking, a fresh brisknesswas in all his being. Some verses came singing into his memory; they werethe first words of the confident and joyous hymn of St. Ambrose: "Creator of the earth and sky, Ruling the firmament on high, Clothing the day with robes of light, Blessing with gracious sleep the night, -- That rest may comfort weary men To face their usual toil again, And soothe awhile the harassed mind, And sorrow's heavy load unbind. " Suddenly, at the word _sorrow_, the thought of his dead mother came backto him, with the regret for that kind heart he had lost. A wave of despairoverwhelmed him. He flung himself sobbing on the bed, and at last wept allthe tears he had pent up so long. III THE MONK OF THAGASTE Almost a year went by before Augustin continued his journey. It is hard toaccount for this delay. Why should he thus put off his return to Africa, hewho was so anxious to fly the world? It is likely that Monnica's illness, the arrangements about her funeral, and other matters to settle, kept him at Ostia till the beginning ofwinter. The weather became stormy, the sea dangerous. Navigation wasregularly interrupted from November--sometimes even earlier, from thefirst days of October, if the tempests and the equinox were exceptionallyviolent. It would then be necessary to wait till spring. Besides, wordcame that the fleet of the usurper Maximus, then at war with Theodosius, blockaded the African coast. Travellers ran the risk of being captured bythe enemy. From all these reasons, Augustin would be prevented from sailingbefore the end of the following summer. In the meantime, he went to live inRome. He employed his leisure to work up a case against the Manichees, hisbrethren of the day before. Once he had adopted Catholicism, he must haveexpected passionate attacks from his former brothers in religion. To closetheir mouths, he gathered against them an elaborate mass of documents, bristling with the latest scandals. He busied himself also with athorough study of their doctrines, the better to refute them: in him thedialectician never slept. Then, when he had an opportunity, he visited theRoman monasteries, studying their rule and organization, so as to decide ona model for the convent which he always intended to establish in his owncountry. At last, he went back to Ostia some time in August or September, 388, where he found a ship bound for Carthage. Four years earlier, about the same time of year, he had made the samevoyage, coming the opposite way. He had a calm crossing; hardly could onenotice the movement of the ship. It is the season of smooth seas in theMediterranean. Never is it more etherial than in these summer months. Thevague blue sky is confused with the bleached sea, spread out in a largesheet without creases--liquid and flexible silk, swept by quivering amberglow and orange saffron when the sun falls. No distinct shape, only strangesuffusions of soft light, a pearl-like haze, the wistful blue reaching awayindefinably. At Carthage, Augustin had grown used to the magnificence of this pageantryof the sea. Now, the sea had the same appeased and gleaming face he hadseen four years sooner. But how much his soul had since been changed!Instead of the tumult and falsehood which rent his heart and filled itwith darkness, the serene light of Truth, and deeper than the sea's peace, the great appeasement of Grace. Augustin dreamed. Far off the Æolian isleswere gloomed in the impending shadows, the smoky crater of Stromboli wasno more than a black point circled by the double blue of waves and sky. Sothe remembrance of his passions, of all that earlier life, sank under thetriumphant uprising of heavenly peace. He believed that this blissful statewas going to continue and fill all the hours of his new life, and he knewof nothing so sweet. .. . This time, again, he was mistaken about himself. Upon the thin plank of theboat which carried him, he did not feel the force of the immense element, asleep now under his feet, but quick to be unchained at the first gust ofwind; and he did not feel either the overflowing energy swelling his heartrenewed by Grace--an energy which was going to set in motion one of themost complete and strenuous existences, one of the richest in thought, charity, and works which have enlightened history. Thinking only of thecloister, amidst the friends who surrounded him, no doubt he repeated thewords of the Psalm: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethrento dwell together in unity. " He pressed the hands of Alypius and Evodius, and tears came to his eyes. The sun was gone. All the cold waste of waters, forsaken by the gleam, blurred gradually in vague anguish beneath the fall of night. * * * * * After skirting the Sicilian coasts, they arrived at last at Carthage. Augustin did not linger there; he was eager to see Thagaste once more, andto retire finally from the world. Favourable omens drew him to the place, and seemed to hearten him in his resolution. A dream had foretold hisreturn to his former pupil, Elogius, the rhetorician. He was present, too, at the miraculous cure of a Carthage lawyer, Innocentius, in whose house hedwelt with his friends. Accordingly, he left for Thagaste as soon as he could. There he madehimself popular at once by giving to the poor, as the Gospel prescribed, what little remained of his father's heritage. But he does not make clearenough what this voluntary privation exactly meant. He speaks of a houseand some little meadows--_paucis agellulis_--that he sequestrated. Still, he did not cease to live in the house all the time he was at Thagaste. Theprobability is that he did sell the few acres of land he still owned andbestowed the product of the sale on the poor. As to the house, he must havemade it over with the outbuildings to the Catholic body of his native town, on condition of keeping the usufruct and of receiving for himself and hisbrethren the necessities of life. At this period many pious persons actedin this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goodsbeing unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way ofgetting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitraryconfiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls aswere tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests anheroic method of saving themselves the trouble of looking after a fortuneor a landed estate. When these fortunes and lands were extensive, thegenerous donors felt, we are told, an actual relief in getting rid of them. This financial question settled, Augustin took up the task of turning thehouse into a monastery, like those he had seen at Rome and Milan. His sonAdeodatus, his friends Alypius and Evodius, Severus, who became Bishopof Milevia, shared his solitude. But it is certain that he had othersolitaries with him whom he alludes to in his letters. Their rule was asyet a little easy, no doubt. The brothers of Thagaste were not confinedin a cloister. They were simply obliged to fasts, to a special diet, toprayers and meditations in common. In this half-rustic retreat (the monastery was situated at the gates ofthe town) Augustin was happy: he had at last realized the project he hadhad so long at heart. To enter into himself, pray, above all, to studythe Scripture, to fathom even its most obscure places, to comment it withthe fervour and piety which the African of all times has brought to _whatis written down_--it seemed to him that he had enough there to fill allthe minutes of his life. But no man can teach, lecture, discuss, write, during twenty years, in vain. However much Augustin might be converted, heremembered the school at Thagaste, just as he did at Cassicium. Still, itwas necessary to finish with this sort of thing once for all. The new monkmade what may be called his will as a professor. He finished, at this time, or revised his school treatises, which he hadbegun at Milan, comprising all the liberal arts--grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, philosophy, music. Of all these books heonly finished the first, the treatise on grammar. The others were onlysummaries, and are now lost. On the other hand, we have still the sixbooks on music, likewise begun at Milan, which he finished, almost as anamusement, at Thagaste. They are dialogues between himself and his pupil, the poet Licentius, upon metre and scansion. But we know from himself thathe intended to make this book longer, and to write a second part uponmelody, that is to say, music, properly so called. He never found the time:"Once, " he says, "the burthen of ecclesiastical affairs was placed on myshoulders, _all these pleasant things_ slipped from my hands. " Thus, the monk Augustin only rests from prayer and meditation to studymusic and poetry. He has thought it necessary to excuse himself. "In allthat, " says he, "I had but one purpose. For, as I did not wish to pluckaway too suddenly either young men, or those of another age, on whom Godhad bestowed good wits, from ideas of the senses and carnal literature, _things it is very hard for them not to be attached to_, I have triedby reasoning lessons to turn them little by little, and by the love ofunchanging truth, to attach them to God, sole master of all things. .. . Hewho reads these books will see that if I have touched upon the poets andgrammarians, 'twas more by the exigency of the journey than by any desireto settle among them. .. . Such is the life I have chosen to walk with thefeeble, not being very strong myself, rather than to hurl myself out on thevoid with wings still half-fledged. .. . " Here again, how human all that is, and wise--yes, and modest too. Augustinhas no whit of the fanatic about him. No straighter conscience than his, or even more persistent in uprooting error. But he knows what man is, thatlife here below is a voyage among other men weak as himself, and he fits inwith the needs of the voyage. Oh, yes, no doubt, for the Christian who hasarrived at supreme renunciation--what is poetry, what is knowledge, "whatis everything that is not eternal?" But this carnal literature and scienceare so many steps of a height proportionate to our feebleness, to leadus imperceptibly to the conceptual world. As a prudent guide of souls, Augustin did not wish to make the ascent too rapidly. As for music, he hasstill more indulgence for that than for any of the other arts, for "itis by sounds that we best perceive the power of numbers in every varietyof movement, and their study thus leads us gradually to the closest andhighest secrets of truth, and discovers to those who love and seek itthe divine Wisdom and Providence in all things. .. . " He is always comingback to it--to this music he loves so much; he comes back to it in spiteof himself. Later, in great severity, he will reproach himself for thepleasure he takes in the liturgical chants, but nevertheless the oldinstinct will remain. He was born a musician. He will remain one to hislast gasp. If he did not break completely with profane art and letters at this presentmoment of his life, his chief reasons were of a practical order. Stillanother object may be discerned in these educational treatises--namely, toprove to the pagans that one may be a Christian and yet not be a barbarianand ignorant. Augustin's position in front of his adversaries is verystrong indeed. None of them can attempt to cope with him either in breadthof knowledge, or in happy versatility, or in plenitude of intellectualgifts. He had the entire heritage of the ancient world between his hands. Well might he say to the pagans: "What you admire in your orators andphilosophers, I have made my own. Behold it! On my lips recognize theaccent of your orators. .. . Well, all that, which you deem so high, Idespise. The knowledge of this world is nothing without the wisdom ofChrist. " Of course, Augustin has paid the price of this all-round knowledge--toofar-reaching, perhaps, at certain points. He has often too much paraded hisknowledge, his dialectic and oratorical talents. What matters that, if evenin this excess he aims solely at the welfare of souls--to edify them andset them aglow with the fire of his charity? At Thagaste, he disputes withhis brethren, with his son Adeodatus. He is always the master--he knows it;but what humility he puts into this dangerous part! The conclusion of hisbook, _The Master_, which he wrote then, is that all the words of him whoteaches are useless, if the hidden Master reveal not the truth to him wholistens. So, under his ungainly monk's habit, he continues his profession ofrhetorician. He has come to Thagaste with the intention of retiring fromthe world and living in God; and here he is disputing, lecturing, writingmore than ever. The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down there at Rome, at Carthage, at Hippo, thereare men speaking in the forums or in the basilicas, whispering in secretmeetings, seducing poor souls defenceless against error. These impostorsmust be immediately unmasked, confounded, reduced to silence. With all hisheart Augustin throws himself into this work at which he excels. Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees. .. . He wrote many tracts againstthem. From the animosity he put into these, may be judged to what extentManicheeism filled his thoughts, and also the progress of the sect inAfrica. This campaign was even the cause of a complete change in his way ofwriting. With the object of reaching the plainest sort of people, he beganto employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when thesolecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This musthave been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings hemade a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But his real originality is not in that. When he writes the fine style, his period is heavy, entangled, often obscure. On the other hand, nothingis more lively, clear and coloured, and, as we say to-day, more direct, than the familiar language of his sermons and certain of his treatises. This language he has really created. He wanted to clarify, comment, givedetails, and he felt how awkward classical Latin is to decompose ideasand render shades. And so, in a popular Latin, already very close to theRomance languages, he has thrown out the plan of analytical prose, theinstrument of thought of the modern West. Not only did he battle against the heretics, but his restless friendshipcontinually scaled the walls of his cell to fly to the absent ones dearto his heart. He feels that he must expand to his friends, and make themsharers in his meditations: this nervous man, in poor health, spends a partof his nights meditating. The argument he has hit upon in last night'sinsomnia--his friends must be told that! He heaps his letters on them. Hewrites to Nebridius, to Romanianus, to Paulinus of Nola; to people unknownand celebrated, in Africa, Italy, Spain, and Palestine. A time will comewhen his letters will be real encyclicals, read throughout Christendom. Hewrites so much that he is often short of paper. He has not tablets enoughto put down his notes. He asks Romanianus to give him some. His beautifultablets, the ivory ones, are used up; he has used the last one for aceremonial letter, and he asks his friend's pardon for writing to him ona wretched bit of vellum. Besides all that, he interests himself in the affairs of hisfellow-townsmen. Augustin is a personage at Thagaste. The good folk of thefree-town are well aware that he is eloquent, that he has a far-reachingacquaintance, and that he has great influence in high quarters. Theyask for his protection and his interference. It is even possible thatthey obliged him to defend them in the courts. They were proud of theirAugustin. And as they were afraid that some neighbouring town might stealaway their great man, they kept a guard round his house. They prevented himfrom shewing himself too much in the neighbourhood. Augustin himself agreedwith this, and lived retired as far as he could, for he was afraid theywould make him a bishop or priest in spite of himself. In those days thatwas a danger incurred by all Christians who were rich or had talent. Therich gave their goods to the poor when they took orders. The men of talentdefended the interests of the community, or attracted opulent benefactors. And because of all these reasons, the needy or badly managed churchesstalked as a prey the celebrated Augustin. In spite of this supervision, this unremitting rush of business, the workof all kinds which he undertook, he experienced at Thagaste a peace whichhe was never to find again. One might say that he pauses and gatherstogether all his strength before the great exhausting labour of hisapostolate. In this Numidian country, so verdant and cool, where a thousandmemories of childhood encompassed him, where he was not able to take a stepwithout encountering the ever-living image of his mother, he soared towardsGod with more confidence. He who sought in the things of sense ladder-rungswhereby to mount to spiritual realities, still turned kindly eyes onthe natural scene. From the windows of his room he saw the forest pinesrounding their heads, like little crystal goblets with stems slim and thin. His scarred chest breathed in deliriously the resinous breath of the finetrees. He listened like a musician to the orchestra of birds. The changingscenes of country life always attracted him. It is now that he wrote:"Tell me, does not the nightingale seem to you to modulate her voicedelightfully? Is not her song, so harmonious, so suave, so well attuned tothe season, the very voice of the spring?. .. " IV AUGUSTIN A PRIEST This halt did not last long. Soon was going to begin for Augustin the timeof tribulation, that of his struggles and apostolic journeys. And first, he must mourn his son Adeodatus, that young man who seemeddestined to such great things. It is indeed most probable that the youngmonk died at Thagaste during the three years that his father spent there. Augustin was deeply grieved; but, as in the case of his mother's death, hemastered his sorrow by all the force of his Christian hope. No doubt heloved his son as much as he was proud of him. It will be remembered whatwords he used to speak of this youthful genius, whose precocity frightenedhim. Little by little his grief quietened down, and in its place came amild resignation. Some years later he will write about Adeodatus: "Lord, early didst Thou cut off his life from this earth, but I remember himwithout a shadow of misgiving. My remembrance is not mixed with any fearfor his boyhood, or the youth he was, or the man he would have been. " Nofear! What a difference between this and the habitual feelings of theJansenists, who believed themselves his disciples! While Augustin thinks ofhis son's death with a calm and grave joy which he can scarce hide, thoseof Port Royal could only think in trembling of the judgment of God. Theirfaith did not much resemble the luminous and confident faith of Augustin. For him, salvation is the conquest of joy. At Thagaste he lived in joy. Every morning in awaking before the forestpines, glistening with the dews of the morning, he might well say with afull heart: "My God, give me the grace to live here under the shades of Thypeace, while awaiting that of Thy Paradise. " But the Christians continuedto watch him. It was to the interest of a number of people that this lightshould not be hid under a bushel. Perhaps a snare was deliberately laid forhim. At any rate, he was imprudent enough to come out of his retreat andtravel to Hippo. He thought he might be safe there, because, as the townhad a bishop already, they would not have any excuse to get him consecratedin spite of himself. An inhabitant of Hippo, a clerk of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior, begged his spiritual assistance. Doubts, he maintained, still delayed himon the way to an entire conversion. Augustin alone could help him to getclear of them. So Augustin, counting already on a new recruit for theThagaste monastery, went over there at the request of this official. Now, if there was a bishop at Hippo (a certain Valerius), priests werelacking. Furthermore, Valerius was getting on in years. Originally Greek, he knew Latin badly, and not a word of Punic--a great hindrance for him inhis duties of judge, administrator, and catechist. The knowledge of the twolanguages was indispensable to an ecclesiastic in such a country, where themajority of the rural population spoke only the old Carthaginian idiom. All this proves to us that Catholicism was in bad shape in the dioceseof Hippo. Not only was there a lack of priests, but the bishop was aforeigner, little familiar with African customs. There was a generaldemand for a native to take his place--one young, active, and well enoughfurnished with learning to hold his own against the heretics and theschismatics of the party of Donatus, and also sufficiently able to watchover the interests of the Church at Hippo, and above all, to make itprosperous. Let us not forget that at this time, in the eyes of a crowd ofpoor wretches, Christianity was first and foremost the religion which gaveout bread. Even in those early days, the Church did its best to solve theeternal social question. While Augustin was at Hippo, Valerius preached a sermon in the basilica inwhich, precisely, he deplored this lack of priests the community sufferedfrom. Mingled with the congregation, Augustin listened, sure that he wouldbe unrecognized. But the secret of his presence had leaked out. Peoplepointed to him while the bishop was preaching. The next thing was that somefurious enthusiasts seized hold of him and dragged him to the foot of theepiscopal chair, yelling: "Augustin a priest! Augustin a priest!" Such were the democratic ways of the Church in those days. Theinconveniences are plain enough. What is certain is, that if Augustin hadresisted, he might have lost his life, and that the bishop would haveprovoked a riot in refusing him the priesthood. In Africa, religiouspassions are not to be trifled with, especially when they are exasperatedby questions of profit or politics. In his heart, the bishop was delightedwith this brutal capture which gained him the distinction of such awell-known fellow-worker. There and then he ordained the Thagaste monk. Andso, as Augustin's pupil, Possidius, the future Bishop of Guelma, puts it, "This shining lamp, which sought the darkness of solitude, was placed uponthe lamp-stand. .. " Augustin, who saw the finger of God in this adventure, submitted to the popular will. Nevertheless, he was in despair, and hewept at the change they were forcing on him. Then, some of those present, mistaking the significance of his tears, said to console him: "Yes, you are right. The priesthood is not good enough for your merits. Butyou may be certain that you will be our bishop. " Augustin well knew all that the crowd meant by that, and what it expectedof its bishop. He who only thought of leaving the world, grew frightenedat the practical cares he would have to take over. And the spiritual sideof his jurisdiction frightened him no less. To speak of God! Proclaim theword of God! He deemed himself unworthy of so high a privilege. He was soill-prepared! To remedy this fault of preparation, as well as he could, hedesired that he might be given a little leisure till the following Easter. In a letter addressed to Valerius, and no doubt intended to be made public, he humbly set forth the reasons why he asked for delay. They were soapposite and so creditable, that very likely the bishop yielded. The newpriest received permission to retire to a country house near Hippo. Hisflock, who did not feel at all sure of their shepherd, would not have lethim go too far off. He took up his duties as soon as possible. Little by little he became, to all intents, the coadjutor of the bishop, who charged him with thepreaching and the baptism of catechumens. These were the two most importantamong the episcopal prerogatives. The bishops made a point of doing thesethings themselves. Certain colleagues of Valerius even grew scandalizedthat he should allow a simple priest to preach before him in his ownchurch. But soon other bishops, struck by the advantages of thisinnovation, followed the example of Valerius, and allowed their clerks topreach even in their presence. The priest of Hippo did not lose his headamong so many honours. He felt chiefly the perils of them, and he regardedthem as a trial sent by God. "I have been forced into this, " he said, "doubtless in punishment of my sins; for from what other motive can I thinkthat the second place at the helm should be given to me--to me who do noteven know how to hold an oar. .. . " Meanwhile, he had not relinquished his purpose of monastic life. Thougha priest, he meant to remain a monk. It was heart-breaking for him to beobliged to leave his monastery at Thagaste. He spoke of his regret toValerius, who, perceiving the usefulness of a convent as a seminary forfuture priests, gave him an orchard belonging to the church of Hippo, thathe might found a new community there. So was established the monasterywhich was going to supply a great number of clerks and bishops to all theAfrican provinces. Among the ruins of Hippo, that old Roman and Phoenician city, they searchfor the place where Augustin's monastery stood, without much hope of everfinding it. Some have thought to locate it upon that hill where the waterbrought from the near mountains by an aqueduct used to pour into immensereservoirs, and where to-day rises a new basilica which attracts all eyesout at sea. Behind the basilica is a convent where the Little Sisters ofthe Poor lodge about a hundred old people. So is maintained among theAfrican Mussulmans the remembrance of the grand Christian _marabout_. Onemight possibly wish to see there a building more in the pure and quiettaste of antiquity. But after all, the piety of the intention is enough. This hospital serves admirably to call up the memory of the illustriousbishop who was charity itself. As for the basilica, Africa has done all shecan to make it worthy of him. She has given her most precious marbles, andone of her fairest landscapes as a frame. It is chiefly in the evening, in the closing dusk, that this landscapereveals all its special charm and its finer values. The roseate glow of thesetting sun throws into sharp relief the black profile of the mountains, which command the Seybouse valley. Under the mustering shadows, the pallidriver winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines likea slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, thesharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has anindescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelationof the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinatingpalpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seemslike a golden waggon rolling through the fields of Heaven. A deep peacesettles upon farmland and meadow country, only broken by a watch-dog's barknow and then. .. . But it matters not which spot is chosen in the surroundings of Hippo toplace Augustin's monastery, the view will be equally beautiful. From allparts of the plain, mounded by heaps of ruins, the sea can be seen--a widebay circled in soft bland curves, like at Naples. All around, an arena ofmountains--the green ravines of the Edough and its wooded slopes. Along thesurbased roads rise the great sonorous pines, and through them wanders theæolian complaint of the sea-winds. Blue of the sea, blue of the sky, noblefoliage of Italy's ancient groves--it is one of Lamartine's landscapesunder a more burning sun. The gaiety of the mornings there is a physicalluxury for heart and eyes, when the new-born light laughs upon the paintedcupolas of the houses, and dark blue veils float between the walls, glaringwhite, of the steep streets. Among the olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happydays pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which hehimself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict--ina word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture ofletters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessiveausterity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, butsuitable for a bishop and his clerks. Like laymen, they wore the byrrhus, a garment with a hood, which seems very like the ancestor of the Arabburnous. To keep an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume, to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poetRutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid andculture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admirea restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what wasbest in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation. Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any onewas sick, or guests arrived. They drank a little wine, contrary to theregulations of St. Jerome, who condemned wine as a drink for devils. Whena monk infringed the rule, his share of the wine was stopped. Through some remains of fastidious habits in Augustin, or perhaps becausehe had nothing else, the table service he used himself was silver. On theother hand, the pots and dishes were of earthenware, or wood, or commonalabaster. Augustin, who was very temperate in eating and drinking, seemedat table to pay attention only to what was being read or talked about. He cared very little what he ate, provided the food was not a stimulantto lubricity. He used to say to those Christians who paraded a Pharisaicseverity: "It is the pure heart which makes pure food. " Then, with hisconstant desire for charity, he prohibited all spiteful gossip in theconversation in the refectory. In those times of religious struggle, theclerics ferociously blackened each other's characters. Augustin caused tohave written on the walls a distich, which ran thus: "He who takes pleasure in slandering the life of the absent, Should know he is unworthy to sit at this table. " "One day, " says Possidius, "some of his intimate friends, even otherbishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, andvery much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those versesfrom the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I waspresent with many others when this happened. " It was not only slanderous talk or interior dissensions which troubledAugustin's peace of mind. He combined the duties of priest, of a head ofa convent, and of an apostle. He had to preach, instruct the catechumens, battle against the disaffected. The town of Hippo was very unruly, fullof heretics, schismatics, pagans. Those of the party of Donatus weretriumphant, driving the Catholics from their churches and lands. WhenAugustin came into the country, Catholicism was very low. And then theineradicable Manichees continued to recruit proselytes. He never stoppedwriting tracts, disputing against them, overwhelming them under the closelogic of his arguments. At the request of the Donatists themselves, he hadan argument with one of their priests, a certain Fortunatus, in the bathsof Sossius at Hippo. He reduced this man to silence and to flight. Not inthe least discouraged were the Manichees: they sent another priest. If the enemies of the Church shewed themselves stubborn, Augustin's owncongregation were singularly turbulent, hard to manage. The weakness of oldValerius must have allowed a good many abuses to creep into the community. Ere long the priest of Hippo had a foretaste of the difficulties whichawaited him as bishop. Following the example of Ambrose, he undertook to abolish the customof feasts in the basilicas and on the tombs of the martyrs. This was asurvival of paganism, of which the festivals included gluttonous eating andorgies. At every solemnity, and they were frequent, the pagans ate in thecourts and under the porticoes around the temples. In Africa, above all, these public repasts gave an opportunity for repugnant scenes of stuffingand drunkenness. As a rule, the African is very sober; but when he does lethimself go he is terrible. This is quite easily seen to-day, in the greatMuslem feasts, when the rich distribute broken bits of meat to the poor oftheir district. As soon as these people, used to drink water and to eat alittle boiled rice, have tasted meat, or drunk only one cup of wine, thereis no holding them: there are fights, stabbing matches, a general brawlin the hovels. Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in thecemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood whyAugustin did his best to put an end to such scandals. For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius, and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforthhis firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics. During Lent, the subject fitting in naturally with the season, hespoke against these pagan orgies; and this gave rise to a good deal ofdiscontent, outside. Easter went by without trouble. But the day after theAscension, the people of Hippo were used to celebrate what they called "theJoy-day, " by a traditional good feed and drink. The day before, which wasthe religious festival, Augustin intrepidly spoke against "the Joy-day. "They interrupted the preacher. Some of them shouted that as much was doneat Rome in St. Peter's basilica. At Carthage, they danced round the tomb ofSt. Cyprian. To the shrilling of flutes, amid the dull blows of the gongs, mimes gave themselves up to obscene contortions, while the spectatorssang to the clapping of their hands. .. . Augustin knew all about that. He declared that these abominations might have been tolerated in formertimes so as not to discourage the pagans from becoming converts; but thathenceforth the people, altogether Christian, should give them up. In theend, he spoke with such touching eloquence that the audience burst intotears. He believed he had won. The next day it was all to do over again. Agitators had worked among thecrowd to such an extent that a riot was feared. Nevertheless, Augustin, preceded by his bishop, entered the basilica at the hour of service. At thesame moment the Donatists were banqueting in their church, which was quitenear. Through the walls of their own church the Catholics heard the noiseof this carouse. It required the coadjutor's most urgent remonstrances tokeep them from imitating their neighbours. The last murmurs died down, andthe ceremony ended with the singing of the sacred hymns. Augustin had carried the position. But the conflict had got to the pointthat he had to threaten the people with his resignation, and, as he wroteto Alypius, "to shake out on them the dust from his clothes. " All thispromised very ill for the future. He who already considered the priesthoodas a trial, saw with terror the bishopric drawing near. THE FIFTH PART THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY Dic eis ista, ut plorent . .. Et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis. "Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep . .. And thus carry them up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things, if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity. " _Confessions_, IV, 12. I THE BISHOP OF HIPPO In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouringChurches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on thefirst opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be takenunawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case ofAugustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatestprecautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by anymeans. It would be safest to anticipate the danger. He determined therefore to share the bishopric with Augustin, to have himconsecrated during his own lifetime, and to indicate him as his successor. This was against the African usage, and what was more, against the Canonsof the Council of Nice--though it is true that Valerius, like Augustinhimself, was unaware of this latter point. But surely the rule could bewaived in view of the exceptional merits of the priest of Hippo. The oldbishop began by sounding Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage, and when he wassatisfied as to the agreement and support of this high personage, he tookthe opportunity of a religious solemnity to make known his intentions tothe people. Some of the neighbouring bishops--Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate ofNumidia, among them--being gathered at Hippo to consecrate a new bishop, Valerius announced publicly in the basilica that he wished Augustin to beconsecrated at the same ceremony. This had been the wish of his peoplefor a long time. Really, in demanding this honour for his priest, the oldbishop did no more than follow the wish of the public. Immediately, hiswords were received with cheers. The faithful with loud shouts demandedAugustin's consecration. Megalius alone objected. He even made himself the voice of certaincalumnies, so as to have the candidate put aside as unworthy. There isnothing astonishing in such an attitude. This Megalius was old (he died ashort time after), and, like all old men, he took the gloomiest view ofinnovations. Already, in the face of settled custom, had Valerius grantedAugustin the right to preach in his presence. And see now, by a newsinking, he was attempting to place two bishops at once in the see ofHippo! Whatever this young priest's talents might be, enough, had beendone for him--a recent convert into the bargain, and, what was still moreserious, a refugee from the Manicheans. What was not related about theabominations committed in the mysteries of those people? Just how far hadAugustin dipped into them? They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo, and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessivezeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctiliousdefender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up thesemalevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for makingAugustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secretdelight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel arebeings of a different quality from themselves. One of the slanders set abroad about Valerius' priest, Megalius seems tohave believed. He allowed himself to be persuaded that Augustin had givena philtre to a woman, one of his penitents, whom he wished to possess. Itwas then the fashion among the pious to exchange _eulogies_, or bits ofholy bread, to signify a spiritual communion. Augustin was said to havemixed certain magic potions with some of these breads and offered themhypocritically to the woman he was in love with. This accusation started abig scandal, and the remembrance of it persisted long, because five or sixyears later the Donatist Petilian was still repeating it. Augustin cleared himself victoriously. Megalius avowed his mistake. He didbetter: not only did he apologize to him he had slandered, but he solemnlyasked forgiveness from his fellow-bishops for having misled them upon falserumours. It is probable that some time during the inquiry he had got toknow Valerius' coadjutor better. Augustin's charm, taken with the austerityof his life, acted upon the vexed old man and altered his views. Be thatso or not, it was at any rate by Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate ofNumidia, that Augustin was consecrated Bishop of Hippo. He was in consternation over his rise. He has said it again and again. Wemay take his word for it. Yet the honours and advantages of the episcopatewere then so considerable that his enemies were able to describe him as anambitious man. Nothing could agree less with his character. In his heart, Augustin only wished to live in quiet. Since his retreat at Cassicium, fortune he had given up, as well as literary glory. His sole wish was tolive in pondering the divine truths, and to draw nearer to God. _Videte etgustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O taste and see that the Lord is good. "This perhaps, of the whole Bible, is the verse he liked best, whichanswered best to the close desire of his soul; and he quotes it oftenestin his sermons. Then, to study the Holy Writings, scan the least syllablesof them, since all truth lies there--well, a whole life is not too muchfor such labour as that! And to do it, one should sever all ties with theworld, take refuge forbiddingly in the cloister. But this sincere Christian analysed himself too skilfully not to perceivethat he had a dangerous tendency to isolation. He took too much pleasurein cutting himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himselfin study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to theEpicurean indolence--was he going to live a life of the dilettante and theself-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him fromselfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying, in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a manhas exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour indialectics, such widespread culture, such power to bring to naught thewrong--would it not be insulting to God to let such gifts lie idle, and aserious failure in charity to deprive his brethren of the support of suchan engine? Besides that, he well knew that no man draws near to truth without apurified heart. Might not his passions, which were so violent, begin totorment him again after this respite with greater frenzy than before hisconversion? Against that, too, action was the main antidote. In the dutiesof the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism--a kind of courageouspurification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxietiesand so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidiousvoice of his "old friends. " Could he manage to silence them at once?This unheard-of grace--would it be granted to him? Or would not ratherthe struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out ascertain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his kneesunder the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has beenfreed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from itsvices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses--save, perhaps, some old sediment of intellectual and literary vanity. His books, at the first glance, shew us him no more save as the doctor, andalready the saint. What is seen at once is an entirely bare intelligence, an entirely pure heart, fired only by the divine love. And yet theaffectionate and tender heart which his had been, always warms hisdiscussions and his most abstract exegesis. It does not take long to feelthe heat of them, the power of pouring forth emotion. Augustin takes noheed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs tohimself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himselfaltogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word, the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of themiserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, toconvince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which workswithout ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor, leader of souls--he has no desire for anything else. But it was a heavy labour for this intellectual, who till then had livedonly among books and ideas. The day after his consecration, he must haveregarded it with more terror than ever. During his nights of insomnia, orat the recreation hour in the monastery garden, he thought over it withgreat distress. His eyes wide open in the darkness of his cell, he soughtto define a theory upon the nature and origin of the soul; or else, at thefall of day, he saw between the olive branches "the sea put on fluctuatingshades like veils of a thousand colours, sometimes green, a green ofinfinite tints; sometimes purple; blue sometimes. .. . " And his soul, easilystirred to poetry, at once arose from these material splendours to theinvisible region of ideas. Then, immediately, he caught himself up: itwas not a question of all that! He said to himself that he was henceforththe bishop Augustin, that he had charge of souls, that he must work forthe needs of his flock. He would have to struggle in a combat without amoment's respite. Thereupon he arranged his plans of attack and defence. With a single glance he gauged the huge work before him. A crushing work, truly! He was Bishop of Hippo, but a bishop almost withouta flock, in comparison with the rival community of Donatists. The bishop ofthe dissentients, Proculeianus, boasted that he was the true representativeof orthodoxy, and as he had on his side the advantage of numbers, hecertainly cut a much greater figure in the town than the successor ofValerius, with all his knowledge and all his eloquence. The schismatics'church, as we have seen, was quite near the Catholic church. Their noiseinterfered with Augustin's sermons. Possibly the situation had becomeslightly better in Hippo since the edict of Theodosius. But it was not solong ago that those of the Donatist party had the upper hand. A littlebefore the arrival of the new bishop, the Donatist clergy forbade theirfaithful to bake bread for Catholics. A fanatical baker had even refused aCatholic deacon who was his landlord. These schismatics believed themselvesstrong enough to put those who did not belong to them under interdict. The rout of Catholicism appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end tothe other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist partyhad been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council ofBagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of their own sect. Among thesebishops, the terrible Optatus of Thimgad became marked on account of hisbloody zeal, rambling round Numidia and even the Proconsulate at the headof armed bands, burning farms and villas, rebaptizing the Catholics by mainforce, spreading terror on all sides. Augustin knew all this, and when he sought help from the local authoritieshe was obliged to acknowledge sadly that there was no support to beexpected from Count Gildo, who had tyrannized over Carthage and Africa fornearly ten years. This Gildo was a native, a Moor, to whom the ministers ofthe young Valentinian II had thought it a good stroke of policy to confidethe government of the province. Knowing the weakness of the Empire, theMoor only thought of cutting out for himself an independent principalityin Africa. He openly favoured Donatism, which was the most numerous andinfluential party. The Bishop of Thimgad, Optatus, swore only by him, regarding him as his master and his "god. " In consequence, he was called"the Gildonian. " Against such enemies, the Imperial authority could only act irregularly. Augustin was well aware of it. He knew that the Western Empire was in acritical position. Theodosius had just died, in the midst of war with theusurper Eugenius. The Barbarians, who made up the greater part of the Romanarmies, shewed themselves more and more threatening. Alaric, entrenchedin the Peloponnesus, was getting ready to invade Italy. However, theall-powerful minister of the young Honorius, the half-Barbarian Stilicho, did his best to conciliate the Catholics, and assured them that he wouldcontinue the protection they had had from Theodosius, Augustin thereforeturned to the central power. It alone could bring about a little order inthe provinces--and then, besides, the new emperors were firmly attachedto the defence of Catholicism. The Catholic Bishop of Hippo did hisbest, accordingly, to keep on good terms with the representatives of theMetropolitan Government--the proconsuls; the proprætors; the counts;and the tribunes, or the secretaries, sent by the Emperor as Governmentcommissioners. There was no suspicion of flattery in his attitude, no idolatry of power. At Milan, Augustin had been near enough to the Court to know what theImperial functionaries were worth. Now, he simply adapted himself as wellas he could to the needs of the moment. And with all that, he could havewished in the depths of his heart that this power were stronger, so as togive the Church more effective support. This cultured man, brought up inthe respect of the Roman majesty, was by instinct a faithful servant ofthe Cæsars. A man who held to authority and tradition, he maintained thatobedience is due to princes: "There is a general agreement, " he said, "of human society to obey its Kings. " In one of his sermons he comparesthought, which commands the body, to the Emperor seated upon his throne, and from the depths of his palace dictating orders which set the wholeEmpire moving--a purely ideal image of the sovereign of that time, but onewhich pleased his Latin imagination. Alas! Augustin had no illusions aboutthe effect of Imperial edicts; he knew too well how little they wereregarded, especially in Africa. So he could hardly count upon Government support for the defence ofCatholic unity and peace. He found he must trust to himself; and allhis strength was in his intelligence, in his charity, in his deeplycompassionate soul. Most earnestly did he wish that Catholicism might be areligion of love, open to all the nations of the earth, even as its DivineFounder Himself had wished. A glowing and dominating intelligence, charitywhich never tired--those were Augustin's arms. And they were enough. Thesequalities gave him an overwhelming superiority over all the men of histime. Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From whata height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues, such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebratedwriters of his time--Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus. After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by theintellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of theirmind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even theillustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature, the author of _The Doctrine of Plato_, praises philosophy and the SupremeBeing in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist anddruggist, Homais, in _Madame Bovary_. Nor among those who surrounded Augustin, his fellow-bishops, was there onefit to be compared with him, even at a distance. Except perhaps Nebridius, his dearest friends, Alypius, Severus, or Evodius, are merely disciples, not to say servants of his thought. Aurelius, Primate of Carthage, anenergetic administrator, a firm and upright character, if he is not onAugustin's level, is at any rate capable of understanding and supportinghim. The others are decent men, like that Samsucius, Bishop of Tours, verynearly illiterate, but full of good sense and experience, and on thisground consulted respectfully by his colleague of Hippo. Or else they areplotters, given to debauch, engaged in business, like Paulus, Bishop ofCataqua, who became involved in risky speculations, swindled the revenue, and by his expensive way of life ruined his diocese. Others, on theDonatist side, are mere swashbucklers, half-brigands, half-fanatics, likethe Gildonian Optatus, Bishop of Thimgad, a manifestation in advance ofthe Mussulman _marabout_ who preached the holy war against the Catholics, raiding, killing, burning, converting by sabre blows and bludgeoning. Amid these insignificant or violent men, Augustin will endeavour to realizeto the full the admirable type of bishop, at once spiritual father, protector, and support of his people. He had promised himself to sacrificeno whit of his ideal of Christian perfection. As bishop, he will remain amonk, as he did during his priesthood. Beside the monastery established inValerius' garden, where it is impossible to receive properly his guests andvisitors, he will start another in the episcopal residence. He will conformto the monastic rule as far as his duties allow. He will pray, study theScriptures, define dogmas, refute heresies. At the same time, he means toneglect nothing of his material work. He has mouths to feed, property tolook after, law-cases to examine. He will labour at all that. For thismystic and theorist it means a never-ceasing immolation. First, to give the poor their daily bread. Like all the communities of thattime, Hippo maintained a population of beggars. Often enough, the diocesancash-box was empty. Augustin was obliged to hold out the hand, to deliverfrom the height of his pulpit pathetic appeals for charity. Then, there arehospitals to be built for the sick, a lodging-house for poor wanderers. The bishop started these institutions in houses bequeathed to the churchof Hippo. For reasons of economy, he thought better not to build. Thatwould overload his budget. Next came the greatest of all his cares--theadministration of Church property. To increase this property, he stipulatedthat his clergy should give up all they possessed in favour of thecommunity, thus giving the faithful an example of voluntary poverty. He also accepted gifts from private persons. But he also often refusedthese--for example, the bequest of a father or mother, who, in a moment ofanger, disinherited their children. He did not wish to profit by the badfeelings of parents to plunder orphans. On another side, he objected toengage the Church in suits at law with the exchequer upon receiving certainheritages. When a business man at Hippo left to the diocese his share ofprofits in the service of boats for carrying Government stores, Augustincame to the conclusion that it would be better to refuse. In case ofshipwreck, they would be obliged to make good the lost corn to theTreasury, or else to put the captain and surviving sailors to the tortureto prove that the crew was not responsible for the loss of the ship. Augustin would not hear tell of it. "Is it fit, " he said, "that a bishop should be a shipowner?. .. A bishopa torturer? Oh, no; that does not agree at all with a servant of JesusChrist. " The people of Hippo did not share his views. They blamed Augustin'sscruples. They accused him of compromising the interests of the Church. Oneday he had to explain himself from the pulpit: "Well I know, my brothers, that you often say between yourselves: 'Why donot people give anything to the Church of Hippo? Why do not the dying makeit their heir? The reason is that Bishop Augustin is too easy; he gives allback to the children; he keeps nothing!' I acknowledge it, I only acceptgifts which are good and pious. Whoever disinherits his son to make theChurch his heir, let him find somebody willing to accept his gifts. It isnot I who will do it, and by God's grace, I hope it will not be anybody. .. . Yes, I have refused many legacies, but I have also accepted many. Need Iname them to you? I will give only one instance. I accepted the heritage ofJulian. Why? Because he died without children. .. . " The listeners thought that their bishop really put too fine a point onthings. They further reproached him with not knowing how to attract and flatter therich benefactors. Augustin would not allow, either, that they had any rightto force a passing stranger to receive the priesthood and consequently togive up his goods to the poor. All this really was very wise, not onlyaccording to the spirit of the Gospel, but according to human prudence. If Augustin, for the sake of the good fame of his Church, did not wish toincur the accusation of grasping and avarice, he dreaded nothing so muchas a law-case. To accept lightly the gifts and legacies offered was to layhimself open to expensive pettifogging. Far better to refuse than to loseboth his money and reputation. So were reconciled, in this man of prayerand meditation, practical good sense with the high disinterestedness of theChristian teaching. The bishop was disinterested; his people were covetous. The people of thosetimes wished the Church to grow rich, because they were the first to profitby its riches. Now these riches were principally in houses and land. Thediocese of Hippo had to deal with many houses and immense _fundi_, uponwhich lived an entire population of artisans and freed-men, agriculturallabourers, and even art-workers--smelters, embroiderers, chisellers onmetals. Upon the Church lands, these small people were protected from taxesand the extortions of the revenue officers, and no doubt they found theepiscopal government more fatherly and mild than the civil. Augustin, who had made a vow of poverty and given his heritage to the poor, became by a cruel irony a great landowner as soon as he was elected Bishopof Hippo. Doubtless he had stewards under him to look after the propertyof the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of managementand supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of hisown tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and werevictimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shewthat no detail of country life was unfamiliar to him. On horseback or muleback, he rode for miles through the country aboutHippo to visit his vineyards and olivets. He examined, found out things, questioned the workmen, went into the presses and the mills. He knew thegrape good to eat, and the grape to make wine with. He pointed out wherethe ensilage pits had been dug in too marshy land, which endangered theyoung corn. As a capable landowner he was abreast of the law, carefulabout the terms of contracts. He knew the formulas employed for sales orbenefactions. He saw to it that charcoal was buried around the landmarks inthe fields, so that if the post disappeared, its place could be found. Andas he was a poet, he gathered on his course a whole booty of rural imageswhich later on went to brighten his sermons. He made ingenious comparisonswith the citron-tree, "which is seen to give flowers and fruits all theyear if it be watered constantly, " or else with the goat "who gets upon hertwo hind legs to crop the bitter leaves of the wild olive. " These journeys in the open air, however tiring they might be, were afterall a rest for his overworked brain. But there was one among his episcopalduties which wearied him to disgust. Every day he had to listen to partiesin dispute and give judgment. Following recent Imperial legislation, thebishop became judge in civil cases--a tiresome and endless work in acountry where tricky quibbling raged with obstinate fury. The litigantspursued Augustin, overran his house, like those fellahs in dirty burnouswho block our law-courts with their rags. In the _secretarium_ of thebasilica, or under the portico of the court leading to the church, Augustinsat like a Mussulman cadi in the court of the mosque. The emperors had only regulated an old custom of apostolic times in placingthe Christians under the jurisdiction of their bishop. In accordance withSt. Paul's advice, the priests did their utmost to settle differences amongthe faithful. Later, when their number had considerably increased, theGovernment adopted a system not unlike the "Capitulations" in countriesunder the Ottoman suzerainty. Lawsuits between clerics and laymen could notbe equitably judged by civil servants, who were often pagans. Moreover, theparties based their claims on theological principles or religious laws thatthe arbitrator generally knew nothing about. In these conditions, it wasnatural enough that the Imperial authority should say to the disputants, "Fight it out among yourselves". And it happened, just at the moment when Augustin began to fill the see ofHippo, that Theodosius broadened still more the judicial prerogatives ofthe bishops. The unhappy judge was overwhelmed with law-cases. Every day hesat till the hour of his meal, and sometimes the whole day when he fasted. To those who accused him of laziness, he answered: "I can declare on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, Ishould like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours ofthe day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest ofthe time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, insteadof being troubled with all the complications and dull talk of lawsuits. " The rascality of the litigants made him indignant. From the pulpit he gavethem advice full of Christian wisdom, but which could not have been muchrelished. A suit at law, according to him, was a loss of time and a causeof sorrow. It would be better to let the opponent have the money, than tolose time and be filled with uneasiness. Nor was this, added the preacherin all good faith, to encourage injustice; for the robber would be robbedin his turn by a greater robber than himself. These reasons seemed only moderately convincing. The pettifoggers did notget discouraged. On the contrary, they infested the bishop with theirpleas. As soon as he appeared, they rushed up to him in a mob, surroundedhim, kissed his hand and his shoulder, protesting their respect andobedience, urging him, constraining him to busy himself about theiraffairs. Augustin yielded. But the next day in a vehement sermon he criedout to them: _Discedite a me, maligni!_--"Go far from me, ye wicked ones, and let mestudy in peace the commandments of my God!" II WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city. We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo isutterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a halfaway, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the deadcity are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, andchiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easilyunderstood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in thecourse of centuries, and have put on, time after time, the garb forced uponthem by the fashion. Those of Africa have remained just as they were--atleast in their principal lines--on the morrow of the Arab invasion, asAugustin's eyes had seen them. They are ruins, no doubt, and some verymutilated, but ruins of which no restoration has altered the plan orchanged the features. As the traces of Hippo and its church are swept away or deeply buried, weare obliged, in order to get some approximate idea, to turn towards anotherAfrican town which has suffered less from time and devastation. Thevestewith its basilica, the best preserved, the finest and largest in allAfrica, can restore to us a little of the look and colour and atmosphere ofHippo in those final years of the fourth century. Ancient Theveste was much larger than the present town, the French Tebessa. This, even reduced to the perimeter of the Byzantine fortress built underJustinian, still surprises the traveller by its singularly original aspect. Amid the wide plains of alfa-grass which surround it, with its quadrangularenclosure, its roads on the projection of the walls behind the battlements, its squat turrets, it has a look as archaic, as strange, as our ownAigues-Mortes amid its marshy fen. Nothing can be more rich and joyous tothe eye than the rust which covers its ruins--a complete gilding that onewould say had been laid on by the hand of man. It has a little temple which is a wonder and has been compared to theancient Roman temple--the _Maison Carrée_--at Nîmes. But how much warmer, more living are the stones! The shafts of the columns, and the pilasters ofthe peristyle, barked by time, seem as scaly and full of sap as the trunksof palm-trees. The carved acanthus-leaves in the capitals of the pillarsdroop like bunches of palms reddened by the summer. Quite near, at the end of a narrow street, lined with modern and squalidhovels, the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus and of Caracalla extends itsluminous bow; and high above the heavy mass of architecture, resting uponslim aerial little columns, a buoyant _ædiculus_ shines like a coraltabernacle or a coffer of yellow ivory. All about, forms in long draperies are huddled. The Numidian burnous hasthe whiteness of the toga. It has also the same graceful folds. At thesight of them you suddenly feel yourself to be in a strange land--carriedback very far across the centuries. No sooner is the vision of antiquityoutlined than it grows firm. Down below there, a horseman, clad in white, is framed with his white horse in the moulded cincture of a door. Hepasses, and upon the white wall of the near tower his shadow rests amoment, like a bas-relief upon the marble of a frieze. Beyond the Byzantine enclosure, the basilica, with its minor buildings, forms another town almost as large as the present Theveste, and also closedin by a belt of towers and ramparts. One is immediately struck by theopulent colour of the stones--rose, grown pale and thinner in the sun; andnext, by the solid workmanship and the structural finish. The stones, asin the Greek temples, are placed on top of one another in regular layers:the whole holds together by the weight of the blocks and the polish of thesurfaces. The proportions are on a large scale. There was no grudging for thebuildings, or the materials, or the land. In front of the basilica is awide rectangular court bordered with terraces; a portico at the far end;and in the middle four large fountains to water the walk. A flagged avenue, closed by two gateways, divides this court from the basilica, properly socalled, which is reached by a staircase between two columns. The staircaseleads to the _atrium_ decorated by a Corinthian portico. In the centreis the font for purifications, a huge monolithic bason in the shape of afour-leaved clover. Three doors give entrance from the _atrium_ to thebasilica, which is divided by rows of green marble columns into threeaisles. The galleries spread out along the side aisles. The floor was inmosaic. In the apse, behind the altar, stood the bishop's throne. Around the main building clustered a great number of others: a baptistry;many chapels (one vaulted in the shape of a three-leaved clover) dedicated, probably, to local martyrs; a graveyard; a convent with its cells, and itswindows narrow as loop-holes; stables, sheds, and barns. Sheltered withinits walls and towers, amid its gardens and outbuildings, the basilica ofTheveste thus early resembled one of our great monasteries of the MiddleAge, and also in certain ways the great mosques of Islam--the one atCordova, or that at Damascus, with their vestibules surrounded by arcades, their basons for purification, and their walks bordered with orange-trees. The faithful and the pilgrims were at home there. They might spend the daystretched upon the flags of the porticoes, in loafing or sleeping in theblue shade of the columns and the cool of the fountains. In the full senseof the word, the church was the House of God, open to all. Very likely the basilicas at Hippo had neither the size nor the splendourof this one. Nor were there very many. At the time Augustin was ordainedpriest, that is to say, when the Donatists had still a majority in thetown, it seems clear that the orthodox community owned but one singlechurch, the _Basilica major_, or Basilica of Peace. Its very name provesthis. With the schismatics, "Peace" was the official name for Catholicism. "Basilica of Peace" meant simply "Catholic Basilica. " Was not this asmuch as to say that the others belonged to the dissenters? Doubtless theyrestored later on, after the promulgations of Honorius, the LeontianBasilica, founded by Leontius, Bishop of Hippo, and a martyr. A third wasbuilt by Augustin during his episcopate--the Basilica of the Eight Martyrsof the White Mace. It was in the Major, or Cathedral, that Augustin generally preached. Topreach was not only a duty, but one of the privileges of a bishop. As hasbeen said, the bishop alone had the right to preach in his church. Thisarose from the fact that the African dioceses, although comparativelywidespread, had scarcely more people than one of our large parishes to-day. The position of a bishop was like that of one of our parish priests. Therewere almost as many as there were villages, and they were counted byhundreds. However that may be, preaching, the real apostolic ministry, was anexhausting task. Augustin preached almost every day, and often many times aday--rough work for a man with such a fragile chest. Thus it often happenedthat, to save his voice, he had to ask his audience to keep still. He spokewithout study, in a language very near the language of the common people. Stenographers took down his sermons as he improvised them: hence thoserepetitions and lengthinesses which astonish the reader who does not knowthe reason for them. There is no plan evident in these addresses. Sometimesthe speaker has not enough time to develop his thought. Then he puts offthe continuation till the next day. Sometimes he comes with a subject allprepared, and then treats of another, in obedience to a sudden inspirationwhich has come to him with a verse of Scripture he has just read. Othertimes, he comments many passages in succession, without the least care forunity or composition. Let us listen to him in this Basilica of Peace, where during thirty-fiveyears he never failed to announce the Word of God. .. . The chant of thePsalms has just died away. At the far end of the apse, Augustin rises fromhis throne with its back to the wall, his pale face distinct against thegolden hue of the mosaic. From that place, as from the height of a pulpit, he commands the congregation, looking at them above the altar, which is aplain wooden table placed at the end of the great aisle. The congregation is standing, the men on one side, the women on the other. On the other side of the balustrade which separates them from the crowd, are the widows and consecrated virgins, wrapped in their veils black orpurple. Some matrons, rather overdressed, lean forward in the front rankof the galleries. Their cheeks are painted, their eyelashes and eyebrowsblackened, their ears and necks overloaded with jewels. Augustin hasnoticed them; after a while he will read them a lesson. This audience isall alive with sympathy and curiosity before he begins. With all its faithand all its passion it collaborates with the orator. It is turbulent also. It expresses its opinions and emotions with perfect freedom. The democraticcustoms of those African Churches surprise us to-day. People made a noiseas at the theatre or the circus. They applauded; they interrupted thepreacher. Certain among them disputed what was said, quoting passages fromthe Bible. Augustin is thus in perpetual communication with his audience. Nobody hasdone less soaring than he. He keeps his eye on the facial expressionsand the attitudes of his public. He talks to them familiarly. When hissermon is a little lengthy, he wants to know if his listeners are gettingtired--he has kept them standing so long! The time of the morning mealdraws near. Bellies are fasting, stomachs wax impatient. Then says he tothem with loving good-fellowship: "Go, my very dear brothers and sisters, go and restore your strength--I donot mean that of your minds, for I see well that they are tireless, but thestrength of your bodies which are the servants of your souls. Go then andrestore your bodies so that they may do their work well, and when they arerestored, come back here and take your spiritual food. " Upon certain days, a blast of the sirocco has passed over the town. Thefaithful, crowded in the aisles, are stifling, covered with sweat. Thepreacher himself, who is very much worked up, has his face dripping, andhis clothes are all wet. By this he perceives that once more he has beenextremely long. He excuses himself modestly. Or again, he jokes like arough apostle who is not repelled by the odour of a lot of human-kindgathered together. "Oh, what a smell!" says he. "I must have been speaking a long whileto-day. " These good-natured ways won the hearts of the simple folk who listened tohim. He is aware of the charm he exerts on them, and of the sympathy theygive him back in gratitude for his charity. "You have loved to come and hear me, my brothers, " he said to them. "Butwhom have you loved? If it is me--ah, even that is good, my brothers, forI want to be loved by you, if I do not want to be loved for myself. As forme, I love you in Christ. And you too, do you love me in Him. Let our lovefor one another moan together up to God--and that is the moaning of theDove spoken of in the Scripture. .. . " Although he preaches from the height of his episcopal throne, he is anxiousthat his hearers should regard him, Christianly, as their equal. So heseems as little of the bishop as possible. "All Christians are servants of the same master. .. . I have been in theplace where you are--you, my brothers, who listen to me. And now, if Igive the spiritual bread from the height of this chair to the servants ofthe Master of us all--well, it is but a few years since I received thisspiritual food with them in a lower place. A bishop, I speak to laymen, butI know to how many future bishops I speak. .. . " So he puts himself on an equal footing with his audience by the brotherlyaccent in his words. It is not Christendom, the Universal Church, or I knownot what abstract listener he addresses, but the Africans, the people ofHippo, the parishioners of the Basilica of Peace. He knows the allusions, the comparisons drawn from local customs, which are likely to impress theirminds. The day of the festival of St. Crispina, a martyr of those parts, after he had developed his subject at very great length, he asked pardon inthese terms: "Let us think, brothers, that I have invited you to celebrate the birthdayof the blessed Crispina, and that I have kept up the feast a little toolong. Well, might not the same thing happen if some soldier were to ask youto dinner and obliged you to drink more than is wise? Let me do as much forthe Word of God, with which you should be drunk and surfeited. " Marriages, as well as birthday feasts, supplied the orator with vividallegories. Thus he says that when a marriage feast is made in a house, organs play upon the threshold, and musicians and dancers begin to sing andto act their songs. And yet how poor are these earthly enjoyments whichpass away so soon!. .. "In the House of God, the feast has no end. " Continually, through the commentaries on the Psalms, like comparisons riseto the surface--parables suited to stir the imagination of Africans. Athousand details borrowed from local habits and daily life enliven theexegesis of the Bishop of Hippo. The mules and horses that buck when oneis trying to cure them, are his symbol for the recalcitrant Donatists. Thelittle donkeys, obstinate and cunning, that trot in the narrow lanes ofAlgerian _casbahs_, appear here and there in his sermons. The gnats bite inthem. The unendurable flies plaster themselves in buzzing patches on thetables and walls. Then there are the illnesses and drugs of that country:the ophthalmias and collyrium. What else? The tarentulas that run alongthe beams on the ceiling; the hares that scurry without warning betweenthe horses' feet on the great Numidian plains. Elsewhere, he reminds hisaudience of those men who wear an earring as a talisman; of the dealingsbetween traders and sailors--a comparison which would go home to thisseafaring people. The events of the time, the little happenings of the moment, glide intohis sermons. At the same time as the service in church to-day, there isgoing to be horse-racing at the circus, and fights of wild beasts orgladiators at the arena. In consequence, there will not be many peoplein the Basilica. "So much the better, " says Augustin. "My lungs will getsome rest. " Another time, it is advertised through the town that mostsensational attractions will be offered at the theatre--there will be ascene representing the open sea. The preacher laughs at those who havedeserted the church to go and see this illusion: "They will have, " sayshe, "the sea on the stage; but we, brothers--ah, we shall have our port inJesus Christ. " This Saturday, while he is preaching, some Jewish women setthemselves to dance and sing on the terraces of the near houses, by way ofcelebrating the Sabbath. In the basilica, the bashing of the crotolos canbe heard, and the thuds of the tambourines. "They would do better, " saysAugustin, "to work and spin their wool. " He dwells upon the catastrophes which were then convulsing the Roman world. The news of them spread with wonderful rapidity. Alaric's Barbarianshave taken Rome and put it to fire and sword. At Jerusalem has been anearthquake, and the bishop John organizes a subscription for the sufferersthroughout Christendom. At Constantinople, globes of fire have been seen inthe sky. The _Serapeum_ of Alexandria has just been destroyed in a riot. .. . All these things follow each other in lively pictures, without any apparentorder, throughout Augustin's sermons. It is not he who divides hisdiscourse into three parts, and refrains from passing to the second till hehas learnedly expounded the first. Whether he comments upon the Psalms orthe Gospels, his sermons are no more than explanations of the Scriptureswhich he interprets, sometimes in a literal sense, and sometimes in anallegoric. Let us acknowledge it--his allegoric discourses repel us bytheir extreme subtilty, sometimes by their bad taste; and when he confineshimself to the letter of the text, he stumbles among small points ofgrammar which weary the attention. We follow him no longer. We thinkhis audience was very obliging to listen so long--and on their feet--tothese endless dissertations. .. . And then, suddenly, a great lyrical andoratorical outburst which carries us away--a wind which blows from thehigh mountains, and in the wink of an eye sweeps away like dust all thosefine-spun reasonings. He is fond of certain commonplaces, and also of certain books of theBible--for instance, _The Song of Songs_ and the Gospel of St. John, theone satisfying in him the intellectual, and the other the mystic of love. He confronts the verse of the Psalm: "Before the morning star have Ibegotten thee, " with the sublime opening of the Fourth Gospel: "In thebeginning was the Word. " He lingers upon the beauty of Christ: _Speciosusforma præ filiis hominum_, "Thou art fairer than the children of men. " Thisis why he is always repeating with the Psalmist: "Thy face, Lord, have Isought"--_Quæsivi vultum tuum, Domine. _ And the orator, carried away byenthusiasm, adds: "Magnificent saying! Nothing more divine could be said. Those feel it who truly love. " Another of his favourite subjects is thekindness of God: _Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O tasteand see that the Lord is good. " Naught can equal the pleasure of thiscontemplation, of this life in God. Augustin conceives it as a musicianwho has fathomed the secret of numbers. "Let your life, " he said, "be oneprolonged song. .. . We do not sing only with the voice and lips when weintone a canticle, but in us is an inward singing, because there is also inus Some One who listens. .. . " To live this rhythmic and divine life we must get free of ourselves, giveourselves up utterly in a great outburst of charity. "Why, " he cries--"Oh, why do you hesitate to give yourselves lest youshould lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that youlose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom andupholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words:'Give yourself. ' If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he wouldsay to you: 'Give me your gold. ' And for something else, he would say:'Give me your silver, give me your money. ' Listen to what Charity says toyou by the mouth of Wisdom: 'My son, give me thy heart. ' 'Give me, ' quothshe. Give what? 'My son, give me thy heart. '. .. Thy heart was not happywhen it was governed by thee, and was thine, for it turned this way andthat way after gawds, after impure and dangerous loves. 'Tis from there thyheart must be drawn. Whither lift it up? Where to place it? 'Give me thyheart, ' says Wisdom, 'let it be mine, and it will belong to thee foralways. '" After the chant of love, the chant of the Resurrection. _Cantate mihicanticum novum_--"Sing to me a new song!" Augustin repeats these words overand over again. "We wish to rise from the dead, " cry souls craving foreternity. And the Church answers: "Verily, I say unto you, that you shallrise from the dead. Resurrection of bodies, resurrection of souls, ye shallbe altogether reborn. " Augustin has explained no dogma more passionately. None was more pleasing to the faithful of those times. Ceaselessly theybegged to be strengthened in the conviction of immortality and of meetingagain brotherlike in God. With what intrepid delight it rose--this song of the Resurrection inthose clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliantornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And whatartless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopledtheir walls--the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, thegreen trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the fieldand farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths andvirtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towardsGod. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears andpomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture inthe Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries. Those young basilicas were truly the temples of the Resurrection, whereall the creatures of the Ark saved from the waters had found their refuge. Never more in the centuries to follow shall humanity know this frank joy athaving triumphed over death--this youth of hope. III THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also oneof the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word--amiableaccording to the world, amiable according to Christ. To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with hishearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks--with thebitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property, and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, _Sarcinaepiscopatus_, under which he so often groaned. He had furthermore tocatechize, baptize, direct consciences, guard the faithful against error, and dispute with all those who threatened Catholicism. Augustin was a lightof the Church. He knew it. Doing his best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertookthese tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfilprecisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. Whathe would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying theScriptures and meditating on the dogmas--not from a love of trifling withtheories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gaveforth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at thepriesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quickas they could, a complete education in religious subjects. We are leftastounded before the huge labour which Augustin must have given to acquirehis. Before long he even dominated the whole exegetical and theologicalknowledge of his time. In his zeal for divine letters, he knew sleep nomore. And yet he did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of ourparish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He wasan incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that hisinstructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himselfwith persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's commonpeople. All had a right to his lessons, the simple peasants as well as therich and scholarly. One day, a farmer he was teaching walked off and lefthim there in the middle of his discourse. The poor man, who had fasted, andnow listened to his bishop standing, was faint from hunger and felt hislegs tremble under him. He thought it better to run away than to fall downexhausted at the feet of the learned preacher. With his knowledge of men, Augustin carefully studied the kind of peoplehis catechumens were, and adapted his instructions to the character ofeach. If they were city folk, Carthaginians, used to spending their time intheatres and taverns, drunken and lazy, he took a different tone with themfrom what he used with rustics who had never left their native _gourbi_. If he were dealing with fashionable people who had a taste for literature, he did not fail to exalt the beauties of the Scripture, although, he wouldsay, they had there a very trifling attraction compared to the truthscontained in it. Of all the catechumens, the hardest to deal with, themost fearsome in his eyes, were the professors--the rhetoricians and thegrammarians. These men are bloated with vanity, puffed up with intellectualpride. Augustin knew something about that. It will be necessary to rousethem violently, and before anything else, to exhort them to humility ofmind. The good saint goes further. Not only is he anxious about the souls, butalso about the bodies of his listeners. Are they comfortable for listening?As soon as they feel tired they must not hesitate to sit down, as is theusage in the basilicas beyond seas. "Would not our arrogance be unbearable, " he asked, "if we forbade men whoare our brothers to sit down in our presence, and, much more, men whom weought to try with all possible care to make our brothers?. .. " If they are seen to yawn, "then things ought to be said to them to awakentheir attention, or to scatter the sad thoughts which may have come intotheir minds. " The catechist should shew, now a serene joy--the joy ofcertainty; now a gaiety which charms people into belief; "and always thatlight-heartedness we should have in teaching. " Even if we ourselves are sadfrom this reason or that, let us remember that Jesus Christ died for thosewho are listening to us. Is not the thought of bringing Him disciplesenough to make us joyful? Bishop Augustin set the example for his priests. It is not enough tohave prepared the conversion of his catechumens with the subtlety of thepsychologist, and such perfect Christian charity; but he accompanies themto the very end, and charges them once more before the baptismal piscina. How he is changed! One thinks of the boon-fellow of Romanianus and ofManlius Theodorus, of the young man who followed the hunts at Thagaste, and who held forth on literature and philosophy in a select company beforethe beautiful horizons of the lake of Como. Here he is now with peasants, slaves, sailors, and traders. And he takes pleasure in their society. It ishis flock. He ought to love it with all his soul in Jesus Christ. What aneffort and what a victory upon himself an attitude so strange reveals tous! For really this liking for mean people was not natural to him. He musthave put an heroic will-power into it, helped by Grace. A like sinking of his preferences is evident in the director of conscienceshe became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He wasat the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him astheir physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises anever-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouragingenterprise to bend these hardened pagans--above all, these Africans--toChristian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching theirdrunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to getdrunk and over-eat themselves. The rich at their feasts literally stuffedtill they choked. The Bishop of Hippo never lets a chance go by to recallthem to sobriety. Oftener still, he recalls them to chastity. He writes long letters on thissubject which are actual treatises. The morals of the age and country arefully disclosed in them. Husbands are found loudly claiming a right to freelove for themselves, while they force their wives to conjugal fidelity. Theadultery they allow themselves, they punish with death in their wives. Theymake an abusive practice of divorce. Upon the most futile reasons, theysend the wife the _libellus repudii_--the bill repudiating the marriage--asthe various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state oftransition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians. For example: If a man cast off his wife under pretext of adultery, mighthe marry again? Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long asboth parties are living. But may not this prohibition provoke husbands tokill their adulterous wives, so as to be free to take a new wife? Anotherproblem: A catechumen divorced under the pagan law and since remarried, presents himself for baptism. Is he not an adulterer in the eyes of theChurch? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who evendeclares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine--canhe be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, andgo into the very smallest details of casuistry. Is it forbidden to eat the meats consecrated to idols, even when a manor woman is dying of hunger? May one enter into agreements with nativecamel-drivers and carriers who swear by their gods to keep the bargain?May a lie be told in certain conditions?--say, so as to get among hereticsin pretending to be one of themselves, and thus be able to spy on themand denounce them? May adultery be practised with a woman who promises inexchange to point out heretics?. .. The Bishop of Hippo severely condemnsall these devious or shameful ways, all these compromises which arecontrary to the pure moral teaching of the Gospel. But he does this withoutaffecting intolerance and rigidity, and with a reminder that the evil ofsin lies altogether in the intention, and in the consent of the will. In aword, one must tolerate and put up with what one is powerless to hinder. Other questions, which it is quite impossible to repeat here, give us astrange idea of the corruption of pagan morals. Augustin had all hecould do to maintain the Christian rule in such surroundings, where theChristians themselves were more or less tainted with paganism. But if thistroop of sinners and backsliders was hard to drive, the devout were perhapsharder. There were the _continents_--the widowers and widows who had made avow of chastity and found this vow heavy; the consecrated virgins who livedin too worldly a fashion; the nuns who rebelled against their spiritualdirector or their superior; the monks, either former slaves who did notwant to do another stroke of work, or charlatans who played upon publiccredulity in selling talismans and miraculous ointments. Then, the marriedwomen who refused themselves to their husbands; and those who gave awaytheir goods to the poor without their husbands' consent; and also the proudvirgins and widows who despised and condemned marriage. Then came the crowd of pious souls who questioned Augustin on points ofdogma, who wanted to know all, to clear up everything; those who thoughtthey should be able here below to see God face to face, to know how weshall arise, and who asked if the angels had bodies. .. . Augustin complainsthat they are annoying, when he has so many other things to trouble him, and that they take him from his studies. But he tries charitably to satisfythem all. Besides all this, he was obliged to keep up a correspondence with a greatnumber of people. In addition to his friends and fellow-bishops, he wroteto unknown people and foreigners; to men in high place and to lowly people;to the proconsuls, the counts and the vicars of Africa; to the very mightyOlympius, Master of the Household to the Emperor Honorius; or again, "tothe Right Honourable Lady Maxima, " "to the Illustrious Ladies Proba andJuliana, " "to the Very Holy Lady Albina"--women who belonged either to theprovincial nobility, or to the highest aristocracy of Rome. To whom did henot write?. .. And what is admirable in these letters is that he does not answernegligently to get rid of a tiresome duty. Almost all of them are fullof substantial teaching, long thought over. Many were intended to bepublished--they are practically charges. And yet, however grave the toneof them may be, the cultivated man of the world he had been may be traced. His correspondents, after the fashion of the time, overwhelm the bishopwith the most fulsome praises. These he accepts, with much ceremonyindeed, but he does accept them as evidence of the charity of hisbrethren. Ingenuously, he does his best to return them. Let us not growover-scandalized because our men of letters of to-day have debased thevalue of complimentary language by squandering and exaggerating it. Themost austere cotemporaries of Augustin, and Augustin himself, outdid themby a long way in the art and in the abuse of compliments. Paulinus of Nola, always beflowered and elegant, wrote to Augustin:"Your letters are a luminous collyrium spread over the eyes of my mind. "Augustin, who remonstrated with him upon the scarcity of his own letters, replies in language which our own _Précieuses_ would not have disowned:"What! You allow me to pass two summers--and two African summers!--in suchthirst?. .. Would to God that you would allow enter to the opulent banquetof your book, the long fast from your writings which you have put meupon during all a year! If this banquet be not ready, I shall not giveover my complaints, unless, indeed, that in the time between, you send mesomething to keep up my strength. " A certain Audax, who begged the honourof a special letter from the great man, calls him "the oracle of the Law";protests that the whole world celebrates and admires him; and finally, atthe end of his arguments, conjures him in verse to "Let fall upon me thedew of thy divine word. " Augustin, with modesty and benignity, returns hiscompliments, but not without slipping into his reply a touch of banter:"Allow me to point out to you that your fifth line has seven feet. Hasyour ear betrayed you, or did you want to find out if I was still capableof judging these things?". .. Truly, he is always capable of judging thesethings, nor is he sorry to have it known. A young Greek named Dioscorus, who is passing through Carthage, questions him upon the philosophy ofCicero. Augustin exclaims at any one daring to interrupt a bishop aboutsuch trifles. Then, little by little, he grows milder, and carried away byhis old passion, he ends by sending the young man quite a dissertation onthis good subject. Those are among his innocent whimsicalities. Then, alongside of letterseither too literary, or erudite, or profound, there are others which aresimply exquisite, such as the one he wrote to a young Carthage girl calledSapida. She had embroidered a tunic for her brother. He was dead, and sheasked Augustin kindly to wear this tunic, telling him that if he woulddo this, it would be a great comfort for her in her grief. The bishopconsented very willingly. "I accept this garment, " he said to her, "and Ihave begun to wear it before writing to you. .. . " Then gently he pities hersorrow, and persuades her to resignation and hope. "We should not rebuke people for weeping over the dead who are dear tothem. .. . When we think of them, and through habit we look for them stillaround us, then the heart breaks, and the tears fall like the blood of ourbroken heart. .. . " At the end, in magnificent words, he chants the hymn of the Resurrection: "My daughter, your brother lives in his soul, if in his body he sleeps. Does not the sleeper wake? God, who has received his soul, will put itagain in the body He has taken from him, not to destroy it--oh, no, butsome day to give it to him back. " * * * * * This correspondence, voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberlesstreatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it isby these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended byhiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. Andthis is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his_Confessions_ should be preferred to his treatises on Grace. To study, tocomment the Scriptures, to draw more exact definitions from the dogmas--hesaw no higher employment for his mind, or obligation more important fora bishop. To believe so as to understand, to understand the better tobelieve--it is a ceaseless movement of the intelligence which goes fromfaith to God and from God to faith. He throws himself into this greatlabour without a shade of any attempt to make literature, with a completesinking of his tastes and his personal opinions, and in it he entirelyforgets himself. One single time he has thought of himself, and it is precisely in the_Confessions_, the spirit of which modern people understand so ill, andwhere they try to find something quite different from what the authorintended. He composed them just after he was raised to the bishopric, todefend himself against the calumnies spread about his conduct. It seems asif he wanted to say to his detractors: "You believe me guilty. Well, I amso, and more perhaps than you think, but not in the way you think. " A greatreligious idea alters this personal defence. It is less a confession, or anexcuse for his faults, in the present sense of the word, than a continualglorification of the divine mercy. It is less the shame of his sins heconfesses, than the glory of God. After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, thePelagians--the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by withoutrefuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. Hemight well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fightingjournalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderfulvigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have thelast word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity--sometimes evenwit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. Herepeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions, into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused himreal pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endlessdemonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became aquestion of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keepquiet. In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze forscribbling. He himself, in his _Retractations_, is startled by the numberof his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatistsamusingly opposed to him: _Væ mullum loquentibus_--"Woe unto them of manywords. " But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Væ tacentibus dete_--"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee. " In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. Andelsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I likemuch better to read than to write books. .. . " In any case, his modesty was evident. "I am myself, " he acknowledges, "almost always dissatisfied with what I say. " To the heretics he declares, with a glance back at his own errors, "I know by experience how easy itis to be wrong. " When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he doesnot force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How muchintellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on theTrinity: "Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anythingwhich comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it isfrom me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me. " And again, how much tolerance and charity in those counsels to the faithfulof his diocese who, having been formerly persecuted by the Donatists, nowburned to get their revenge: "It is the voice of your bishop, my brothers, sounding in your ears. Heimplores you, all of you who are in this church, to keep yourselves frominsulting those who are outside, but rather to pray that they may enterwith you into communion. " Elsewhere, he reminds his priests that they must preach at the Jews in aspirit of friendliness and loving-kindness, without troubling to know ifthey listen with gratitude or indignation. "We ought not, " said he, "tobear ourselves proudly against these broken branches of Christ's tree. ". .. This charity and moderation took nothing from the firmness of hischaracter. This he proved in a startling way in the discussion he had withSt. Jerome over a passage In the Epistle to the Galatians, and upon thenew translation, of the Bible which Jerome had undertaken. The solitary ofBethlehem saw a "feint" on the part of St. Paul in the disputed passage:Augustin said, a "lie. " What, then, would become of evangelic truth ifin such a place the Apostle had lied? And would not this be a means ofauthorizing all the exegetical fantasies of heresiarchs, who alreadyrejected as altered or forged all verses of the holy books which conflictedwith their own doctrines?. .. As to the new translation of the Bible, it would bring about trouble in theAfrican churches, where they were accustomed to the ancient version of theSeptuagint. The mistranslations, pointed out by Jerome in the old version, would upset the faithful and lead them to suspect that the entire Scripturewas false. In this double matter, Augustin defended at once orthodoxy andtradition from very praiseworthy reasons of prudence. Jerome retorted in a most aggressive and offensive tone. He flatly accusedthe Bishop of Hippo of being jealous of him and of wishing to cut out areputation for learning at his expense. In front of his younger and moresupple adversary, he took on the air of an old wrestler who was stillcapable of knocking out any one who had the audacity to attack him. Hehurled at Augustin this phrase heavy with menaces: "The tired ox standsfirmer than ever on his four legs. " For all that, Augustin stuck to his opinion, and he confined himselfto replying gently: "In anything I say, I am not only always ready toreceive your observations upon what you find wounding and contrary to yourfeelings, but I even ask your advice as earnestly as I can. ". .. IV AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS" One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit aCatholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessonedby the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecratedvirgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged herunmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heardof the affair, condemned the farmer's brutality and declared that he wouldnever receive the girl back into the community unless she came of her ownfree will. He then went out to the place to try and settle the matter. Onthe way, as he was crossing an estate which belonged to a Catholic matron, he fell in with a priest of the Donatist Church at Hippo. The priest atonce began to insult him and his companions, and yelled: "Down with the traitors! Down with the persecutors!" And he vomited out abominations against the matron herself who owned theland. As much from prudence as from Christian charity, Augustin did notanswer. He even prevented those with him from falling upon the insulter. Incidents of this kind happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of anotherapostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loaferwho beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his monstrousconduct. "Well, as you talk in that tone of voice, " said the loafer, "I'm going tobe a Donatist. " Through bravado, he continued to ill-treat the poor old woman, and to makethe worst kind of threats. He roared in savage fury: "Yes, I'll become a Donatist, and I'll have your blood. " And the young ruffian did really go over to the Donatist party. Inaccordance with the custom among the heretics, he was solemnly rebaptizedin their basilica, and he exhibited himself on the platform clad in thewhite robe of the purified. People in Hippo were much shocked. Augustin, full of indignation, addressed his protests to Proculeianus, the Donatistbishop. "What! is this man, all bloody with a murder in his conscience, to walk about for eight days in white robes as a model of innocence andpurity?" But Proculeianus did not condescend to reply. These cynical proceedings were trifling compared to the vexations which theDonatists daily inflicted on their opponents. Not only did they tamper withAugustin's people, but the country dwellers of the Catholic Church werecontinually interfered with on their lands, pillaged, ravaged, and burnedout by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from oneend of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, theycalled themselves "the Athletes of Christ. " The Catholics had given themthe contemptuous name of "Circoncelliones, " or prowlers around cellars, because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops offanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring thecountry like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches whofell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels ofwine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with "the Athletes ofChrist. " When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folkwere panic-stricken--the "Circoncelliones" were not far off. Soon theyappeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: _Deolaudes!_--"Praise be to God. " "Your shout, " said Augustin to them, "is moredreaded by our people than the roaring of lions. " Something had to be done to quell these furious monsters, and to resistthe encroachments and forcible acts of the heretics. These, by way offrightening the Catholic bishops, told them roundly: "We don't want any of your disputes, and we are going to rebaptize just asit suits us. We are going to lay snares for your sheep and to rend themlike wolves. As for you, if you are good shepherds, keep quiet!" Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength insmall local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within thelimits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africawere in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to theCatholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of theircommunity to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere adissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeedin stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must bestopped. In Augustin's eyes there was no more urgent work. For him and hisflock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attackedeven in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo, as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle. He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. Toestablish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of hisepiscopate. Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continuallystriking against since the beginning of this history? It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolatingAfrica. Just after the great persecution of Diocletian, the sect was born, and it increased with amazing rapidity. During this persecution, evidencehad not been wanting of the moral slackness in the African Church. A largenumber of lay people apostatized, and a good number of bishops and priestshanded over to the pagan authorities, besides the devotional objects, the Scriptures and the muniments of their communities. In Numidia, andespecially at Constantine, scandalous scenes took place. The cowardiceof the clergy was lamentable. Public opinion branded with the names of_traditors_, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacredbooks to the pagans. The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so littlebrilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to provewith superb impudence that they had been braver than the others. So theyset themselves to shout _traditor_ against whoever displeased them, andparticularly against those of Carthage and the Proconsulate. At bottom itwas the old rivalry between the two Africas, East and West. Under the reign of Constantine a peace had been patched up, when it fellout that a new Bishop of Carthage had to be elected, and the ArchdeaconCæcilianus, whose name was put forward, was accused of preventing thefaithful from visiting the martyrs in their prisons. The zealots contendedthat in collusion with his bishop, Mensurius, he had given up the HolyScriptures to the Roman authorities to be burned. The election promised tobe stormy. The supporters of the Archdeacon, who feared the hostility ofthe Numidian bishops, did not wait for their arrival. They hurried thingsover. Cæcilianus was elected and consecrated by three bishops of thedistrict, of whom one was a certain Felix of Abthugni. At once the opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At theirhead was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee, who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, anda doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic beforereceiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Cæcilianus forbade this devotion assuperstitious, and thus made a relentless enemy of the fanatical Spaniard. All the former accusations were renewed against him, and it was addedthat Felix of Abthugni, who had consecrated him, was a _traditor_. Hencethe election was void, by the single fact of the unworthiness of theconsecrating bishops. Lucilla, having bribed a section of the bishopsassembled in council, Cæcilianus was deposed, and the deacon Majorinuselected in his room. He himself was soon after succeeded by Donatus, anactive, clever, and energetic man, who organized resistance so ably, andwho represented so well the spirit of the sect, that he left it his name. Henceforth, Donatism enters into history. But Cæcilianus had on his side the bishops overseas and the ImperialGovernment. The Pope of Rome and the Emperor recognized him as legitimatelyelected. Besides that, he cleared himself of all the grievances urgedagainst him. Finally, an inquiry, conducted by laymen, proved that Felix ofAbthugni was not a _traditor_. The Donatists appealed to Constantine, thento two Councils convoked successively at Rome and Arles. Everywhere theywere condemned. Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the characterof him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on theirvalidity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a _traditor_, were canonically sound. This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As amatter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St. Cyprianhimself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. Thelocal prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptizedby the Catholics--that is to say, by the supporters of the _traditors_. The theological question was complicated with a question of property whichwas all but insoluble. Since the Donatist bishops were resolved to separatefrom the Catholic communion, did they mean to give up, with their title, their basilicas and the property belonging to their churches? Supposingthat they themselves were disinterested, they had behind them the crowd ofclients and land-tillers who got their living out of the Church, and dwelton Church property. Never would these people allow a rival party to alterthe direction of the charities, to plant themselves in their fields andtheir _gourbis_, to expel them from their cemeteries and basilicas. Otherreasons, still deeper perhaps, induced the Donatists to persevere in theschism. These religious dissensions were agreeable to that old spiritof division which at all times has been the evil genius of Africa. TheAfricans have always felt the need of segregating themselves from oneanother in hostile _cofs_. They hate each other from one village toanother--for nothing, just, for the pleasure of hating and felling eachother to the ground. At bottom, here is what Donatism really was: It was an extra sharp attackof African individualism. These rebels brought in nothing new in dogma. They would not even have been heretics without their claim to rebaptize. They limited themselves to retain a position gained long ago; to keeptheir churches and properties, or to seize those of the Catholics upon thepretence that they were themselves the legitimate owners. With that, theyaffected a respect for tradition, an austerity in morals and discipline, which made them perfect puritans. Yes, they were the pure, theirreconcilables, who alone had not bent before the Roman officials. Allthis was very pleasing to the discontented and quarrelsome, and caressedthe popular instinct in its tendency to particularism. That is why the sect became, little by little, mistress of almost thewhole country. Then it subdivided, crumbled up into little churches whichexcommunicated each other. In Southern Numidia, the citadels of orthodoxDonatism, so to speak, were Thimgad and Bagai. Carthage, with its primate, was the official centre. But in the Byzacena and Tripolitana Regio, there were the Maximianists, and the Rogatists in Mauretania, who hadcut themselves off from the Great Church. These divisions of the schismcorresponded closely enough to the natural compartments of North Africa. There must be some incompatibility of temper between these various regions. To this day, Algiers prides itself on not thinking like Constantine, whichdoes not think like Bona or like Tunis. Are we to see in Donatism a nationalist or separatist movement directedagainst the Roman occupation? That would be to transport quite modern ideasinto antiquity. No more in Augustin's time than in our own was there such athing as African nationality. But if the sectaries had no least thought ofseparating from Rome, it is none the less true that they were in rebellionagainst her representatives, temporal as well as spiritual. Supposing thatRome had yielded to them--an impossible event, of course--that would havemeant a surrender to the claims of Africans who wished to be masters oftheir property as well as of their religious beliefs in their own country. What more could they have wanted? It little mattered to them who was thenominal master, provided that they had the realities of government in theirhands. Altogether, Donatism is a regionalist revindication, very stronglycharacterized. It is a remarkable fact that it was among the indigenouspopulation, ignorant of Latin, that the most of its adherents wererecruited. * * * * * Such was the position of the Church in Africa when Augustin was namedBishop of Hippo. He judged it at once, with his clear-sightedness, hisstrong good sense, his broad outlook of a Roman citizen freed from thesmallnesses of a local spirit, his Christian idealism which took no heedof the accidents or considerations of worldly prosperity. What! wasCatholicism to become an African religion, a restricted sect, wretchedlytied to the letter of tradition, to the exterior practices of worship? Toreign in a little corner of the world--did Christ die for that? Never!Christ died for the wide world. The only limits of His Church are thelimits of the universe. And besides, in this resolution to exclude, whatbecomes of the great principle of Charity? It is by charity, above all, that we are Christians. Faith without love is a faith stagnant and dead. .. . Augustin also foresaw the consequences of spiritual separation; he had themalready under his eyes. The Church is the great spring, not only of love, but of intelligence. Once cut away from this reviving spring, Donatismwould become dry and stunted like a branch stripped from a tree. Thedeep sense of its dogmas would become impoverished as its works emptiedthemselves of the spirit of charity. Obstinacy, narrowness, lack ofunderstanding, fanaticism, and cruelty--there you had the inevitable fruitsof schism. Augustin knew the rudeness and ignorance of his opponents, evenof the most cultivated among them: he might well ask himself in anguishwhat would become of the African Church deprived of the benefit of Romanculture, isolated from the great intellectual current which united all thechurches beyond seas. Finally, he knew his fellow-countrymen; he knew thatthe Donatists, even victorious, even sole masters of the land, would turnagainst themselves the fury they now satisfied against the Catholics, andnever stop tearing each other in pieces. Here was now nearly a hundredyears that they had kept Africa in fire and blood. This meant before verylong a return to barbarism. Separated from Catholicism, they would reallyseparate from the Empire and even from civilization. And so it was thatin fighting for Catholic unity, Augustin fought for the Empire and forcivilization. Confronted with these barbarians and sectaries, his attitude could not bedoubtful for a single moment. He must do his best to bring them back to theChurch. It was only a matter of hitting upon the most effectual means. Preaching, for an orator such as he was, should be an excellent weapon. His eloquence, his dialectic, his profane and sacred learning, gave him animmense superiority over the defenders of the opposite side. He certainlykept in the Church many Catholics who were ready to apostatize. But beforethe crowd of schismatics, all these high gifts were as good as lost. The people were in no wise anxious to know upon which side truth was tobe found. They were Donatists, as they were Numidians or Carthaginians, without knowing why--because everybody about them was. Many might haveanswered like that grammarian of Constantine, who told the Inquisitors withastute simplicity: "I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. Myfather was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier andhad served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood. .. . As for me, Iam quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of theordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage, Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out thatBishop Cæcilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don't know who, andthey elected another bishop against him. That's how the schism began atCarthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism, because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there hasbeen a schism here, we know nothing about it. " When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts ofagricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to anestate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had everbeen professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like theirneighbours, like the other people of the _cof_ to which they had belongedfrom father to son. The theological side of the question left themabsolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refusedto listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command. The bishops, on their side, avoided all discussion. Augustin tried in vainto arrange an argument with Proculeianus, his Donatist colleague at Hippo. And if some of them shewed themselves more obliging, the evasions andreticences of the antagonist, and sometimes outside circumstances, made thedebate utterly futile. At Thubursicum the audience raised such a noise inthe place where Augustin was debating with the bishop Fortunius, that theywere no longer able to hear each other. At other times, the meeting sank toan oratorical joust, wherein they tired themselves out passading againstwords, instead of attacking the matters at issue. Augustin felt that he waslosing his time. Besides, the Donatist bishops presented an obstinate frontagainst which everything smashed. "Leave us in our errors, " they said ironically. "If we are lost in youreyes, why follow us about? We don't want to be saved. " And they prohibited their flocks from saluting Catholics, from speaking tothem, from going into their churches or into their houses, from sittingdown in the midst of them. They laid an interdict on their adversaries. Primanius, the Donatist Primate of Carthage, upon being invited to aconference, answered proudly: "The sons of the martyrs can have nothing to do with the race of traitors. " This being the state of the case, no method of pacification was left butwritten controversy. Augustin shewed himself tireless at it. It was chieflyin these letters and treatises against the Donatists that he was not afraidto repeat himself. He knew that he was dealing with the deaf, and withthe deaf who did not want to hear: he was obliged to raise his voice. With admirable self-denial he reiterated the same arguments a hundredtimes over, a hundred times took up the history of the quarrel from thebeginning, spreading such a light over the quibbles and refinings of hiscontradictors, that it should have brought conviction to the bluntestminds. "No, " he repeated, "Cæcilianus was not a _traditor_, nor Felix ofAbthugni either who consecrated him bishop. The documents are there toprove this. And even supposing they were, can the fault of a single manbe charged to the whole Church?. .. Then why do you baptize the Catholicsunder the pretence that their priests are _traditors_ and as such unworthyto administer the Sacraments? It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and notthe virtue of the priest which renders baptism efficacious. If it wereotherwise, what was the good of the Redemption? It is the fact that by thevoluntary death of Christ, all men have been called to salvation. Salvationis not the privilege of Africans only. Being Catholic, the Church shouldtake in the whole world. .. . " In the long run, these continual repetitions end by seeming wearisome tomodern readers: for us there arises out of all these discussions a denseand intolerable boredom. But let us remember that all this was singularlyliving for Augustin's cotemporaries, that these thankless developments wereread with passion. And then, too, it was a question of the unity of theChurch which involved, as we cannot too often repeat, the interest of theEmpire and civilization. Against so persuasive a power the Donatists opposed a conspiracy ofsilence. Their bishops forbade the people to read what Augustin wrote. Theydid more--they concealed their own libels so that it was impossible toreply to them. But Augustin used all his skill to unearth them. He refutedthem, and had his refutations recopied and posted on the walls of thebasilicas. The copies circulated through the province and the whole Romanworld. This would have had an excellent result if the quarrel had been entirelyover questions of theory. But immense property interests came into it, and rancours and terrible hates. Augustin was forced to pass from verbalpolemics to direct action--defensive action, at first, and then attack. While he and his fellow-bishops did their utmost to preach peace, theDonatist bishops urged their followers to the holy war. Augustin evenreceived threats on his life. During one of his visitations, he was nearlyassassinated. Men in ambush lay in wait for him. By a providential chance, he took the wrong road, and owed his life to this mistake. His pupilPossidius, who was then Bishop of Guelma, was not so lucky. Brought tobay in a house by the Donatist bishop Crispinus, he defended himselfdesperately. They set fire to the house to turn him out. When there wasnothing else left but to be burned alive, he did come out. The band ofDonatists seized him, and would have beaten his brains out, if Crispinushimself, fearing a prosecution for murder, had not interfered. But theassailants sacked the property and slaughtered all the horses and mulesin the stables. At Bagai, Bishop Maximianus was stabbed in his basilica. A furious mob smashed the altar and began to strike the victim with thefragments, and left him for dead on the flags. The Catholics lifted up hisbody, but the Donatists plucked him out of their hands and flung him fromthe top of a tower, and he fell on a dunghill which broke the fall. Theunhappy man still breathed, and by a miracle he recovered. Meanwhile, the Circoncelliones, armed with their bludgeons, continued topillage and burn the farms. They tortured the owners to extract their moneyfrom them. They made them toil round the mill-path like beasts of burthen, while they lashed at them with whips. At their back, the Donatist priestsinvaded the Catholic churches and lands. There and then they rebaptizedthe labourers. These doings were, indeed, very like the practices of theAfrican Mussulmans to-day, who, in like circumstances, always begin byconverting the Christian farm-hands by main force. Then they purifiedthe basilicas by scraping down the walls and washing the floors with bigdouches of water; and after demolishing the altar, they scattered saltwhere it had stood. It was a perfect disinfection. The Donatists treatedthe Catholics like the plague-stricken. Such acts cried out for vengeance. Augustin, who up till this time hadrecoiled from asking the public authorities to prosecute, who, as anobserver of the apostolic tradition, did not recognize the interferenceof the civil power in Church matters--well, Augustin had to give way tocircumstances, and also to the pressure brought to bear on him by hiscolleagues. Councils assembled at Carthage petitioned the Emperor to takeexceptional measures against the Donatists, who laughed at all the lawsdirected against heretics. When they were summoned before the courts theydemonstrated to the judges, who were often pagans incompetent to decide inthese questions, that it was they who really belonged to the only orthodoxChurch. Something must be done to end this equivocal position, and to bringabout once for all a categorical condemnation of the schism. Augustin, acting in concert with the primate Aurelius, was the ruling spirit of thesemeetings. Let us not judge his conduct by modern ideas, or be in a hurry to exclaimagainst his intolerance. He and the Catholic bishops, in acting thus, were complying with the old tradition which had influenced all the pagangovernments. Rome, particularly, though it recognized all the local sects, all the foreign religions, never allowed any of its subjects to refuse tofall in with the official religion. The persecutions of the Christians andthe Jews had no other motive. Now that it was become the State religion, Christianity, willingly or unwillingly, had to summon people to the sameobedience. The Emperors made a special point of this from political reasonseasy to understand--to prevent riots and maintain public order. Even if thebishops had refrained from all complaint, the Imperial Government wouldhave acted without them and suppressed the disturbances caused by theheretics. Just look at the situation and the men as they were at that moment inAfrica. It was the Catholics who were persecuted, and that with revoltingfury and cruelty. They were obliged to defend themselves. In the nextplace, the distribution of property in those countries made conversionsin batches singularly easy. Multitudes of farm tenants, workmen, andagricultural slaves, lived upon the immense estates of one owner. Withoutany interest in dogmatic questions, they were Donatists simply becausetheir master was. To change these devouring wolves into tranquil sheep, itwas often quite enough if the master got converted. The great blessing ofpeace depended upon pressure being brought to bear on certain persons. Whenall day and every day there was a risk of being murdered or burned out byirresponsible ruffians, the temptation was very strong to fall back on sucha prompt and simple remedy. Augustin and his colleagues ended by making uptheir minds to do so. For that matter, they had no choice. They were boundto strike, or be themselves suppressed by their enemies. However, before resorting to rigorous measures, they resolved to send fortha supreme appeal for reconciliation. The Catholics proposed a meeting tothe Donatists in which they would loyally examine one another's grievances. As personal or material questions made the great bar to an understanding, they promised that every Donatist bishop who turned convert should keephis see. In places where a schismatic and an orthodox bishop were foundtogether, they would come to a friendly agreement to govern the diocese byturns. Where it was impossible for this to be done, it was proposed thatthe Catholic should resign in favour of the other. Augustin lent all hiseloquence to carry this motion, which was sufficiently heroic for a goodnumber of bishops who were not so detached as he from the goods of thisworld. And one must allow that it was difficult to go much further in theway of self-denial. After a good deal of skirmishing and hesitation on the side of theschismatics, the Conference met at Carthage in June of the year 411, underthe presidency of an Imperial commissioner, the tribune Marcellinus. Onceagain, the Donatists saw themselves condemned. Upon the report of thecommissioner, a decree of Honorius classed them definitely among heretics. They were forbidden to rebaptize or to assemble together, under penaltiesof fine and confiscation. Refractory countrymen and slaves would be liableto corporal punishment, and as for the clerics, they would be banished. The effect of these new laws was not long in appearing, and it fullyanswered the wishes of the orthodox bishops. Many populations returned, orpretended to return, to the Catholic communion. This result was largelythe work of Augustin, who for twenty years had worked to bring it about bypreaching and controversy. But, as might be expected, he did not overdohis triumph. Without delay, he set himself to preach moderation to theconquerors. Nor had he waited till the enemy was defeated to do that. Tenyears before, while the Donatists were besetting the Catholics everywhere, he said to the priests of his communion: "Remember this, my brothers, so as to practise and preach it withnever-varying gentleness. Love the men; kill the lie! Lean on truth withoutpride; fight for it without cruelty. Pray for those whom you chide, and forthose to whom you shew their error. " However, the victory of the party of peace was not so thorough as it hadseemed at first. A good many fanatics here and there grew obstinate intheir resistance. The Circoncelliones, maddened, distinguished themselvesby a new outbreak of ravages and cruelties. They tortured and mutilated allthe Catholics who fell into their hands. They had invented an unheard-ofrefinement of torture, which was to cover with lime diluted with vinegarthe eyes of their victims. The priest Restitutus was assassinated in thesuburbs of Hippo. A bishop had his tongue and his hand cut off. If thetowns were pretty quiet, terror began to reign once more in the countryplaces. The Roman authorities exerted themselves to put an end to these bloodyscenes. They heavily chastised the offenders whenever they could catchthem. In his charity, Augustin interceded for them with the judges. Hewrote to the tribune Marcellinus: "We would not that the servants of God should be revenged by hurts like tothose they suffered. Surely, we are not against depriving the guilty of themeans to do harm, but we consider it will be enough, without taking theirlives or wrenching any limb from them, to turn them from their senselesstumult by the restraining power of the laws, in bringing them back to calmand reason; or, in a last resort, to take away the opportunity for criminalactions by employing them in some useful work. .. . Christian judge, in thismatter fulfil the duty of a father, and while repressing injustice, do notforget humanity. " This compassion of Augustin was shewn particularly in his meeting withEmeritus, the Donatist Bishop of Cherchell (or as it was then called, Mauretanian Cæsarea), one of the most stubborn among the irreconcilables. His attitude in dealing with this uncompromising enemy was not only humane, but courteous, full of graciousness, and of the most sensitive charity. This fell out in the autumn of the year 418, seven years after the greatConference at Carthage. Augustin was sixty-four years old. How was itthat he who had always had such feeble health undertook at this age thelong journey from Hippo to Cæsarea? We know that the Pope, Zozimus, hadentrusted him with a mission to the Church of that town. With his tirelesszeal, always ready to march for the glory of Christ, the old bishopdoubtless saw in this journey a fresh opportunity for an apostle. Sohe started off, in spite of the roads, which were very unsafe in thosetroublous times, in spite of the crushing heat of the season--the end ofSeptember. He travelled six hundred miles across the endless Numidianplain and the mountainous regions of the Atlas, preaching in the churches, halting in the towns and the hamlets to decide questions of privateinterest, ever pursued by a thousand business worries and by the squabblesof litigants and the discontented. At last, after many weeks of fatigue andtribulation, he reached Cherchell, where he was the guest of Deuterius, themetropolitan Bishop of Mauretania. Now Emeritus, the deposed bishop, lived mysteriously in the suburbs, inconstant fear of some forcible action on the part of the authorities. When he learned the friendly intentions of Augustin, he came out of hishiding-place and shewed himself in the town. In one of the squares ofCæsarea the two prelates met. Augustin, who had formerly seen Emeritus atCarthage, recognized him, hurried over to him, saluted him, and at oncesuggested a friendly talk. "Let us go into the church, " he said. "This square is hardly suitable for atalk between two bishops. " Emeritus, flattered, agreed. The conversation continued in such a cordialtone that Augustin was already rejoicing upon having won back theschismatic. Deuterius, following the line of conduct which the Catholicbishops had adopted, spoke of resigning and handing over the see to theother. It was agreed that within two days Emeritus should come to thecathedral for a public discussion with his colleague of Hippo. At theappointed hour he appeared. A great crowd of people gathered to hearthe two orators. The basilica was full. Then Augustin, turning to theimpenitent Donatist, said to him mildly: "Emeritus, my brother, you are here. You were also at our Conference atCarthage. If you were beaten there, why do you come here now? If, on theother hand, you think that you were not beaten, tell us what leads you tobelieve that you had the advantage. .. . " What change had Emeritus undergone in two days? Whatever it was, hedisappointed the hopes of Augustin and the people of Cæsarea. He returnedonly ambiguous phrases to the most pressing and brotherly urging. Finally, he took refuge in an angry silence from which it was found impossible todraw him. Augustin went home without having converted the heretic. No doubt he wassorely disappointed. Nevertheless, he shewed no resentment; he even tookmeasures to ensure the safety of the recalcitrant, in a charitable fearless the roused people might do him a bad turn. With all that, when helooked back at the results of nearly thirty years of struggle againstschism, he might well say to himself that he had done good work for theChurch. Donatism, in fact, was conquered, and conquered by him. Was heat last to have a chance to rest himself, with the only rest suitableto a soul like his, in a steady meditation and study of the Scriptures?Henceforth, would he be allowed to live a little less as a bishop and alittle more as a monk? This was always the strong desire of his heart. .. . But new and worse trials awaited him at Hippo. THE SIXTH PART FACE TO FACE WITH THE BARBARIANS Et nunc veniant omnes quicumque amant Paradisum, locum quietis, locum securitatis, locum perpetuae felicitatis, locum in quo non pertimescas Barbarum. "And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more. " _Sermon upon the Barbarian Persecution_, vii, 9. I THE SACK OF ROME During June of the year 403, an astonishing event convulsed the formercapital of the Empire. The youthful Honorius, attended by the regentStilicho, came there to celebrate his triumph over Alaric and the Gothicarmy, defeated at Pollentia. The pageantry of a triumph was indeed a very astonishing sight forthe Romans of that period. They had got so unused to them! And noless wonderful was the presence of the Emperor at the Palatine. SinceConstantine's reign, the Imperial palaces had been deserted. They hadhardly been visited four times in a century by their master. Rome had never got reconciled to the desertion of her princes. When theCourt was moved to Milan, and then to Ravenna, she felt she had beenuncrowned. Time after time the Senate appealed to Honorius to shew himself, at least, to his Roman subjects, since political reasons were against hisdwelling among them. This journey was always put off. The truth is, theChristian Cæsars did not like Rome, and mistrusted her still half-paganSenate and people. It needed this unhoped-for victory to bring Honoriusand his councillors to make up their minds. The feeling of a common dangerhad for the moment drawn the two opposing religions together, and herethey were apparently making friends in the same patriotic delight. Oldhates were forgotten. In fact, the pagan aristocracy had hopes of bettertreatment from Stilicho. On account of all these reasons, the triumphantCæsar was received at Rome with delirious joy. The Court, upon leaving Ravenna, had crossed the Apennines. A halt wascalled on the banks of the Clitumnus, where in ancient times the greatwhite herds were found which were sacrificed at the Capitol during atriumph. But the gods of the land had fallen; there would be no opiman bullthis time on their altars. The pagans felt bitter about it. Thence, by Narnia and the Tiber valley, they made their way down into theplain. The measured step of the legions rang upon the large flags of theFlaminian way. They crossed the Mulvius bridge--and old Rome rose like anew city. In anticipation of a siege, the regent had repaired the Aurelianwall. The red bricks of the enclosure and the fresh mason-work of thetowers gleamed in the sun. Finally, striking into the _Via lata_, theprocession marched to the Palatine. The crowd was packed in this long, narrow street, and overflowed into thenearest alleys. Women, elaborately dressed, thronged the balconies, andeven the terraces of the palace. All at once the people remarked that theSenate was not walking before the Imperial chariot. Stilicho, who wished toconciliate their good graces, had, contrary to custom, dispensed them frommarching on foot before the conqueror. People talked with approval of thiswily measure in which they saw a promise of new liberties. But applause andenthusiastic cheers greeted the young Honorius as he passed by, sharingwith Stilicho the honour of the triumphal car. The unequalled splendour of his _trabea_, of which the embroideriesdisappeared under the number and flash of colour of the jewels, left thepopulace gaping. The diadem, a masterpiece of goldsmith's work, pressedheavily on his temples. Emerald pendants twinkled on each side of his neck, which, as it was rather fat, with almost feminine curves, suggested at onceto the onlookers a comparison with Bacchus. They found he had an agreeableface, and even a soldierly air with his square shoulders and stocky neck. Matrons gazed with tender eyes on this Cæsar of nineteen, who had, at thattime, a certain beauty, and the brilliance, so to speak, of youth. Thisdegenerate Spaniard, who was really a crowned eunuch, and was to spend hislife in the society of the palace eunuchs and die of dropsy--this son ofTheodosius was just then fond of violent exercise, of hunting and horses. But he was even now becoming ponderous with unhealthy fat. His build andbloated flesh gave those who saw him at a distance a false notion of hisstrength. The Romans were most favourably impressed by him, especially theyoung men. But the army, the safeguard of the country, was perhaps even more admiredthan the Emperor. The legions, following the ruler, had almost desertedthe capital. The flower of the troops were almost unknown there. Inconsequence, the march past of the cavalry was quite a new sight for thepeople. A great murmur of admiration sounded as the _cataphracti_ appeared, gleaming in the coats of mail which covered them from head to foot. Upontheir horses, caparisoned in defensive armour, they looked like equestrian, statues--like silver horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each_draconarius_ as he marched by carrying his ensign--a dragon embroidered ona long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed atthe crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs ofscarlet silk flowing over the camber of the gilded cuirasses. .. . The military show poured into the Forum, swept up the _Via Sacra_, and whenit had passed under the triumphal arches of the old emperors, halted at thePalace of Septimus Severus. In the Stadium, the crowd awaited Honorius. When he appeared on the balcony of the Imperial box, wild cheering burstout on all the rows of seats. The Emperor, diadem on head, bowed to thepeople. Upon that the cheers became a tempest. Rome did not know how toexpress her happiness at having at last got her master back. On the eve of the worst catastrophes she had this supreme day of glory, ofdesperate pride, of unconquerable faith in her destiny. The public frenzyencouraged them in the maddest hopes. The poet Claudian, who had followedthe Court, became the mouthpiece of these perilous illusions. "Arise!" hecried to Rome, "I prithee arise, O venerable queen! Trust in the goodwillof the gods. O city, fling away the mean fears of age, _thou who artimmortal as the heavens_!. .. " For all that, the Barbarian danger continued to threaten. The victoryof Pollentia, which, moreover, was not a complete victory, had settlednothing. Alaric was in flight in the Alps, but he kept his eye open for afavourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of moneyand honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenariesand adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings withHonorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Governmentrefused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenanceof his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous richeshad accumulated for so many centuries, was an obvious prey for him and hismen. He had coveted it for a long time; and to get up his courage for thisdaring exploit, as well as to work upon his soldiers, he pretended that hehad a mission from Heaven to chastise and destroy the new Babylon. In hisPannonian forests it would seem he had heard mysterious voices which saidto him: "Advance, and thou shalt destroy the city!" This leader of clans had nothing of the conqueror about him. He understoodthat he was in no wise cut out to wear the purple; he himself felt theBarbarian's cureless inferiority. But he also felt that neither was heborn to obey. If he asked for the title of Prefect of the City, and if hepersisted in offering his services to the Empire, it was as a means to getthe upper hand of it more surely. Repulsed, disdained by the Court, hetried to raise himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the common peopleby giving himself the airs of an instrument of justice, a man designed byfate, who marches blindly to a terrible purpose indicated by the divinewrath. It often happened that he was duped by his own mummery. This turbidBarbarian soul was prone to the most superstitious terrors. Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he wasscared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it wasnot at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had noproper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which thedefence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come backto it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. Thefirst time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cuttingoff the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber insuch a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the greatstore-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, theRomans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskincoats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to itsvillas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whateverthey were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, evenin Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. Theyeven hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that theSenate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormousindemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal. The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on thepeople an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title ofPrefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410, he struck the supreme blow. The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much inblockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. Allwho were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrisonto defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused toarms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretchedand decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted withdesperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring;it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourthof August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaricentered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed iteven then by treachery. The prey was handed to him. The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Partof the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrorswhich accompany such events--violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murdersof individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But inreality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfecthighway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of ageor sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them. It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced someadmirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to theirlast gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, whenAlaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave theorder to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggonsfull. Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. Thecapture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering ona huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. Hewas only a mercenary in rebellion--an ambitious mercenary, no doubt--but, above all, a looter. As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after anothercaught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionariesand the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemedcertain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, wherethe old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves toransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there, seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure whenthey had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report oftheir riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popularrumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whoseproperty was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could notfind purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculouswindfall for the country. They were bled without mercy. Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, CountHeraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants. No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladiesseized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He soldthose unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who providedhuman flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such aheight, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they wouldbe very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province tothe other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from theunfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook totear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretchedfurther than a kite could fly--from Pinian, the husband of St. Melaniathe younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite ofhimself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of hisgoods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give into the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica. Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric. Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians. Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyesof contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothingwas utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat, the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up theruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circusand amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon thedescent of the Goths as a bad dream. It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the wholeMediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginationsof all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral andalmost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused tocredit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by theBarbarians should have been long ago foreseen--that Rome, deprived ofa garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract thecovetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence, already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult, or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal Cityhad been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under theinfluence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one ofhis sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic: "Horrible things, " said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, andfires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard itmany times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, andwe have hardly been able to console ourselves. " This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. Butparty spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of thecalamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches, a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestationof the wrath of Heaven. "While we sacrificed to our gods, " the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Romewas happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has becomeof Rome. .. . " And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for theruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the firstplace, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been onlychastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By thisfrightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrorscommitted), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it returnto the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress ofnations. There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of thefaithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrateto them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans, had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader hadbestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas ofthe holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that manyChristians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virginshad experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all theinhabitants had been robbed of their property. .. . Was it thus that Godprotected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if theyhad the same treatment as the idolaters? This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come backagain on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, whichforbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the paganshad not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity. At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans andChristians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christianshad been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had beentrouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church wereburned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspectionrelaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurriedto proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric, the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs. Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages, traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight ofbirds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people, promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five yearsChristianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation werefulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods. These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignationno longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; hewas now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take onan appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. Theold apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend thebest of his strength to the eve of his death. II THE CITY OF GOD For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and athousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept theAfricans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his _City of God_, the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and alsothe arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants anddefenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal. It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our soleaim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from hisbooks save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates--thosewhich are still living for us of the twentieth century, which containteachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin'sattitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light onhis nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitudewhen we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world whichmay indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense ofspirituality disappears or grows feeble. "Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say. But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimæra laughs. " [1] [Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve. ] Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it onlythrough literature, and, so to speak, æsthetically. Recollections ofschool, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man--there is what theold religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage overus for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitionswas still under his eyes. That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods, their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion, had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, isonly too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked uponas secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential partof the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is aninvention of our modern æsthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way inAugustin's time. Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religiousantiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrineconcerning the gods. The first--that of the theatre, as he calls it, orfabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters. Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornamentof life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims therespect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly thepriests, _ought to be_ cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship inpublic, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served. "Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved forphilosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. Theonly important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on thebeliever, is the third--the civil theology. Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding aspaganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"--matterof opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures. Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated nowand then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our prettywits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowdsdefended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and thewisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities--thatpaganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible, it implied and it _enforced_ not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices, festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of thattime, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable. He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship, and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy--the sacrifices. Atthe period when he wrote _The City of God_, private sacrifices, as well aspublic, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking thelaw whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when theysacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The ritescould not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of thepontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of formertimes. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustincould have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp andaccording to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery. For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and itssacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literaltranslation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of ahecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette. Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julianwas attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beastsstrangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacredcarnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing. During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood. Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and thebutchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gaveup keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls, were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the_Victimarius_, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians, an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composedagainst Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor!) who was equally generousof hecatombs: "To Marcus Cæsar from the white oxen. It will be all overwith us if you come back a conqueror. " People said that Julian, on hisreturn, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands. The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from thesebutcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, underCaligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated inthree months--nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took placeupon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on theforums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Justtry to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with thesmells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another, pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he wasattending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo asthey cut its neck. But the august Cæsar was not so fastidious; he himselfoperated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the shortshirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians, and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passersslipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening. Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victimswere roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia thesenators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke andreceive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue ofVictory. The manipulations of the _haruspicina_ seemed an even worse abomination inthe eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails, were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. Thepagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcelya philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kindof perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or thediscontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor wasgoing to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend tomagic, the _haruspicina_ made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soonas the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance ofthe entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently withanxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarchrelates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on theIthomæa, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquireout from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece ofstrategy. The _haruspex_ put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewedit to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. Helistened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrailsin his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and thentranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer. .. . No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly. For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion, which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understandthe repulsion they caused in the author of _The City of God_. He who wouldnot have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest ofpoets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, andcooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewedproudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine. But what, above all, he attacked, because it was a present and permanentscandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let usnot exaggerate these vices--not the two first, at least. Augustin could notjudge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time--and forthat matter, those of to-day--would have struck us modern people as verysober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happenedat intervals, at times of public festivity or some family celebration. Butas soon as they did begin they were terrible. When one thinks of the orgiesof our Arabs behind locked doors! But it is no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves outcynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses ofeating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivalsand sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals, barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes, _Fercula_, or else, the Rejoicing, _Lætitia_. The poor people, who knewmeat only by sight, ate it on these days, and they drank wine. The effectof this unaccustomed plenty was felt at once. The whole populace weredrunk. The rich in their houses possibly did it with more ceremony, but itwas really the same brutishness. The elegant Ovid, who in the _Art of Love_teaches fine manners to the beginners in love, advises them not to vomit attable, and to avoid getting drunk like the husbands of their mistresses. Plainly, religion was only an excuse for these excesses. Augustin goes toofar when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What istrue is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that thelechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the grossstage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more orless included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games ofthe arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and incertain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what tookplace at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the CelestialVirgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear, and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Motherof the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has notforced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybodywants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or whatwere the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read whatis told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasurein these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravityof men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretchedtrifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who filltheir bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for theblood and grease of sacrifices. And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basicimmorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day, it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. WhatAugustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps thestrongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this arevery timely indeed to consider: "But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoiceto follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they troublethemselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so. Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troopsand be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it butenjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for aboveall is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay theexpenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep underthe weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at easeunder their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at theirservice, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the peopleapplaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care fortheir interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impurebe prohibited_. .. . Let not subdued provinces obey their governors assupervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and theprocurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has nosincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protectestates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of publicharlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company, or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuoushouses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his likingor his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmedtinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights, the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in thetheatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let himbe condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppressthem--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let themkill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people thesepleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for thetrue gods. ". .. However, Augustin acknowledges a number of praiseworthy minds amongpagans--those philosophers, with Plato in the first rank, who have donetheir best to put morality into the religion. The Christian teacher rendersa magnificent tribute to Platonism. But these high doctrines have scarcelygot beyond the portals of the schools, and this moral teaching whichpaganism vaunts of, is practically limited to the sanctuaries. "Let themnot talk, " says he, "of some closely muttered instructions, taught insecret, and whispered in the ear of a few adepts, which hold I know notwhat lessons of uprightness and virtue. But let them shew the templesordained for such pious meetings, wherein were no sports with lasciviousgestures and loose songs. .. . Let them shew us the places where the gods'doctrine was heard against covetousness, the suppression of ambition, thebridling of luxury, and where wretches might learn what the poet Persiusthunders unto them, saying: 'Learn, wretches, and conceive the course of things, What man is, and why nature forth him brings;. .. How to use money; how to help a friend; What we on earth, and God in us, intend. ' Let them shew where their instructing gods were used to give such lessons;and where their worshippers used to go _often_ to hear these matters. As for us, we can point to our churches, built for this sole purpose, wheresoever the religion of Christ is diffused. " Can it surprise, then, if men so ignorant of high morality, and so deeplyembedded in matter, were also plunged in the grossest superstitions?Materialism in morals always ends by producing a low credulity. HereAugustin triumphs. He sends marching under our eyes, in a burlesque array, the innumerable army of gods whom the Romans believed in. There are so manythat he compares them to swarms of gnats. Although he explains that he isnot able to mention them all, he amuses himself by stupefying us with theprodigious number of those he discovers. Dragged into open day by him, awhole divine population is brought out of the darkness and forgetfulnesswhere it had been sleeping perhaps for centuries: the little gods who workin the fields, who make the corn grow and keep off the blight, those whowatch over children, who aid women in labour, who protect the hearth, whoguard the house. It was impossible to take a step among the pagans, to makea movement, without the help of a god or goddess. Men and things were as iffettered and imprisoned by the gods. "In a house, " says Augustin scoffingly, "there is but one porter. He is buta mere man, yet he is sufficient for that office. But it takes three gods, Forculus for the door, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold. Doubtless, Forculus all alone could not possibly look after threshold, doorand hinges. " And if it is a case of a man and woman retiring to the bridalchamber after the wedding, a whole squadron of divinities are set in motionfor an act so simple and natural. "I beseech you, " cries Augustin, "leavesomething for the husband to do!" This African, who had such a strong sense of the unity and fathomlessinfinity of God, waxed indignant at this sacrilegious parcelling of thedivine substance. But the pagans, following Varro, would answer that it wasnecessary to distinguish, among all these gods, those who were just theimagination of poets, and those who were real beings--between the gods offable and the gods of religion. "Then, " as Tertullian had said already, "if the gods be chosen as onions are roped, it is obvious that what is notchosen is condemned. " "Tertullian carries his fancy too far, " commentsAugustin. The gods refused as fabulous are not held reprobate on thataccount. The truth is, they are a cut of the same piece as the admittedgods. "Have not the pontiffs, like the poets, a bearded Jupiter and aMercury without beard?. .. Are the old Saturn and the young Apollo so muchthe property of the poets that we do not see their statues too in thetemples?. .. " And the philosophers, in their turn, however much they may protest againstthe heap of fabulous gods and, like Plato and Porphyry, declare that thereexists but one God, soul of the universe, yet they no less accepted theminor gods, and intermediaries or messengers betwixt gods and men, whomthey called demons. These hybrid beings, who pertained to humanity by theirpassions, and to the divinity by the privilege of immortality, had to beappeased by sacrifices, questioned and gratified by magic spells. And thereis what the highest pagan wisdom ended in--yes, in calling up spirits, andthe shady operations of wizards and wonder-smiths. That is what the pagansdefended, and demanded the continuation of with so much obstinacy andfanaticism. By no means, replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is notthe forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which hasbrought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the templesof your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions. At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom andimpunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence!Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste, sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, agree tocompulsory military service, and you will conquer as they did. Now, allthese virtues are enjoined and encouraged by Christianity. Whatever certainheretics may say, the religion of Christ is not contrary to marriage or thesoldier's profession. The Patriarchs of the old law were blest in marriage, and there are just and holy wars. And even supposing, that in spite of all efforts to save it, the Empire iscondemned, must we therefore despair? We should be prepared for the endof the Roman city. Like all the things of this world, it is liable to oldage and death. It will die then, one day. Far from being cast down, letus strengthen ourselves against this disaster by the realization of theeternal. Let us strengthen our hold upon that which passes not. Above theearthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls, the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to bethe citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life. For the life here below is but the shadow of a shadow. .. . The people of those times were wonderfully prepared to hearken to suchexhortations. On the eve of the Barbarian invasions, these Christians, forwhom the dogma of the Resurrection was perhaps the chief reason of theirfaith, these people, sick at heart, who looked on in torture at the endingof a world, must have considered this present life as a bad dream, fromwhich there should be no delay in escaping. At the very moment even that Augustin began to write _The City of God_, hisfriend Evodius, Bishop of Uzalis, told him this story. He had as secretary a very young man, the son of a priest in theneighbourhood. This young man had begun by obtaining a post as stenographerin the office of the Proconsul of Africa. Evodius, who was alarmed at whatmight happen to his virtue in such surroundings, having first made certainof his absolute chastity, offered to take him into his service. In thebishop's house, where he had scarcely anything to do but read the HolyScripture, his faith became so enthusiastic that he longed for nothing nowbut death. To go out of this life, "to be with Christ, " was his eager wish. It was heard. After sixteen days of illness he died in the house of hisparents. "Now, two days after his funeral, a virtuous woman of Figes, a servant ofGod, a widow for twelve years, had a dream, and in her dream she saw adeacon who had been dead some four years, together with men, and women too, virgins and widows--she saw these servants of God getting ready a palace. This dwelling was so rich that it shone with light, and you would havebelieved it was all made of silver. And when the widow asked whom thesepreparations were for, the deacon replied that they were for a young man, dead the evening before, the son of a priest. In the same palace, she sawan old man, all robed in white, and he told two other persons, also robedin white, to go to the tomb of this young man, and lift out the body, andcarry it to Heaven. When the body had been drawn from the tomb and carriedto Heaven, there arose (said she) out of the tomb a bush of virgin-roses, which are thus named because they never open. .. . " So the son of the priest had chosen the better part. What was the good ofremaining in this abominable world, where there was always a risk of beingburned or murdered by Goths and Vandals, when, in the other world, angelswere preparing for you palaces of light? III THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the _City of God_. Thiswas in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, andthe report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community. "The sixth of the calends of October, " _The Acts_ set forth, "the veryglorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and ValentinianAugustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianusand Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in theBasilica of Peace at Hippo, and the priests Saturnius, Leporius, Barnaby, Fortunatianus, Lazarus, and Heraclius, being present, with all the clergyand a vast crowd of people--Augustin the bishop said: "'Let us without delay look to the business which I declared yesterday toyour charity, and for which I desired you to gather here in large numbers, as I see you have done. If I were to talk to you of anything else, youmight be less attentive, seeing the expectation you are in. "'My brothers, we are all mortal in this life, and no man knows his lastday. God willed that I should come to dwell in this town in the force of myage. But, as I was a young man then--see, I am old now, and as I know thatat the death of bishops, peace is troubled by rivalry or ambition (thishave I often seen and bewailed it)--I ought, so far as it rests with me, toturn away so great a mischief from your city. .. . I am going then to tellyou that my will, which I believe also to be the will of God, is that Ihave as successor the priest Heraclius. ' "At these words all the people cried out: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' "And this cry they repeated three-and-twenty times. "'Christ, hear us! Preserve us Augustin!' "This cry they repeated sixteen times. "'Be our father! Be our bishop!' "This cry they repeated eight times. "When the people became silent, the bishop Augustin spoke again in thesewords: "'There is no need for me to praise Heraclius. As much as I do justiceto his wisdom, in equal measure should I spare his modesty. .. . As youperceive, the secretaries of the church gather up what we say and what yousay. My words and your shouts do not fall to the ground. To put it briefly, these are ecclesiastical decrees that we are now drawing up, and I desireby these means, as far as it is in the power of man, to confirm what I havedeclared to you. ' "Here the people cried out: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' * * * * * "'Be our father, and let Heraclius be our bishop!' "When silence was made again, Augustin the bishop thus spoke: "'I understand what you would say. But I do not wish that it happen to himas it happened to me. Many of you know what was done at that time. .. . I wasconsecrated bishop during the lifetime of my father and bishop, the agedValerius, of blessed memory, and with him I shared the see. I was ignorant, as he was, that this was forbidden by the Council of Nice. I would nottherefore that men should blame in Heraclius, my son, what they blamed inme. ' "With that the people cried out thirteen times: "'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!' "After a little silence, Augustin the bishop said again: "'So he will remain a priest till it shall please God for him to be abishop. But with the aid and mercy of Christ, I shall do in future what upto now I have not been able to do. .. . You will remember what I wanted todo some years ago, and you have not allowed me. For a work upon the HolyScriptures, with which my brothers and my fathers the bishops had deignedto charge me in the two Councils of Numidia and Carthage, _I was not to bedisturbed by anybody during five days of the week_. That was a thing agreedupon between you and me. The act was drawn up, and you all approved ofit after hearing it read. But your promise did not last long. I was soonencroached upon and overrun by you all. I am no longer free to study as Idesire. Morning and afternoon, I am entangled in your worldly affairs. Ibeg of you and supplicate you in Christ's name to suffer me to shift theburthen of all these cares upon this young man, the priest Heraclius, whomI signal, in His name, as my successor in the bishopric. ' "Upon this the people cried out six-and-twenty times: "'We thank thee for thy choice!' "And the people having become silent, Augustin the bishop said: "'I thank you for your charity and goodwill, or rather, I thank God forthem. So, my brothers, you will address yourselves to Heraclius upon allthe points you are used to submit to me. Whenever he needs counsel, my careand my help will not be wanting. .. . In this way, without any loss to you, I shall be able to devote the remainder of life which it may please Godstill to leave me, not to laziness and rest, but to the study of the HolyScriptures. This work will be useful to Heraclius, and hence to yourselves. Let nobody then envy my leisure, for this leisure will be very busy. .. . "'It only remains for me to ask you, at least those who can, to sign theseacts. Your agreement I cannot do without; so kindly let me learn it by yourvoices. ' "At these words the people shouted: "'Let it be so! Let it be so!' * * * * * "When all there became silent, Augustin the bishop made an end, saying: "'It is well. Now let us fulfil our duty to God. While we offer Him theSacrifice, and during this hour of supplication, I would urge of yourcharity to lay aside all business and personal cares, and to pray the LordGod for this church, for me, and for the priest Heraclius. '" The dryness and official wording of the document do not succeed in stiflingthe vividness and colour of this crowded scene. Through the piety of theformal cries, it is easy to see that Augustin's hearers were hard tomanage. This flock, which he loved and scolded so much, was no easier tolead now than when he first became bishop. Truly it was no sinecure to ruleand administrate the diocese of Hippo! The bishop was literally the servantof the faithful. Not only had he to feed and clothe them, to spend his timeover their business and quarrels and lawsuits, but he belonged to them bodyand soul. They kept a jealous eye on the employment of his time; if hewent away, they asked for an explanation. Whenever Augustin went to preachat Carthage or Utica, he apologized to his own people. And before he canundertake a commentary on the Scriptures, a commentary, moreover, which hehas been asked by two Councils to prepare, he must get their permission, or, at any rate, their agreement. At last, at seventy-two years old, after he had been a bishop forthirty-one years, he got their leave to take a little rest. But what arest! He himself said: "This leisure will be very busy"--this leisure whichis going to fill the five holidays in the week. He intends to study andfathom the Scripture, and this, besides, to the profit of his people andclergy and the whole Church. It is the fondest dream of his life--theplan he was never able to realize. All that, at first sight, astonishesus. We ask ourselves, "What else had he been doing up to this time in histreatises and letters and sermons, in all that sea of words and writingswhich his enemies threw up at him, if he was not studying and explainingthe Holy Scriptures?" The fact is, that in most of these writings andsermons he elucidates the truth only in part, or else he is confutingheresiarchs. What he wanted to do was to study the truth for its own sake, without having to think of and be hindered by the exposure of errors; andabove all, to seize it in all its breadth and all its depths, to havedone with this blighting and irritating eristic, and to reflect in a vast_Mirror_ the whole and purest light of the sacred dogmas. He never found the time for it. He had to limit himself to a handbookof practical morals, published under this title before his death, andnow lost. Once more the heresiarchs prevented him from leading a life ofspeculation. During his last years, amid the cruellest anxieties, he hadto battle with the enemies of Grace and the enemies of the Trinity, withArius and Pelagius. Pelagius had found an able disciple in a young Italianbishop, Julian of Eclanum, who was a formidable opponent to the agedAugustin. As for Arianism, which had seemed extinguished in the West, hereit was given a new life by the Barbarian invasion. It was a grave moment for Catholicism, as it was for the Empire. The Goths, the Alani, and the Vandals, after having laid waste Gaul and Spain, weretaking measures to pass over into Africa. Should they renew the attemptsof Alaric and Radagaisus against Italy, they would soon be masters of theentire Occident. Now these Barbarians were Arians. Supposing (and it seemedmore and more likely) that Africa and Italy were vanquished after Gaul andSpain, then it was all over with Western Catholicism. For the invaderscarried their religion in their baggage, and forced it on the conquered. Augustin, who had cherished the hope of equalling the earthly kingdomof Christ to that of the Cæsars, was going to see the ruin of both. His terrified imagination exaggerated still more the only too real andthreatening peril. He must have lived hours of agony, expecting a disaster. If only the truth might be saved, might swim in this sea of errors whichspread like a flood in the wake of the Barbarian onflow! It was from thiswish, no doubt, that sprang the tireless persistence which the old bishopput into a last battle with heresy. If he selected Pelagius specially tofall upon with fury, if he forced his principles to their last consequencesin his theory of Grace, the dread of the Barbarian peril had perhapssomething to do with it. This soul, so mild, so moderate, so tenderlyhuman, promulgated a pitiless doctrine which does not agree with hischaracter. But he reasoned, no doubt, that it was impossible to drivehome too hard the need of the Redemption and the divinity of the Redeemerin front of these Arians, these Pelagians, these enemies of Christ, whoto-morrow perhaps would be masters of the Empire. Therefore, Augustin continued to write, and discuss, and disprove. Therecame a time when he had to think of fighting otherwise than with the pen. His life, the lives of his flock, were threatened. He had to see to thebodily defence of his country and city. The fact was, that some timebefore the great drive of the Vandals, forerunners of them, in the shapeof hordes of African Barbarians, had begun to lay waste the provinces. TheCirconcelliones were not dead, nor their good friends the Donatists either. These sectaries, encouraged by the widespread anarchy, came out of theirhiding-places and shewed themselves more insolent and aggressive than ever. Possibly they hoped for some effective support against the Roman Churchfrom the Arian Vandals who were drawing near, or at least a recognition ofwhat they believed to be their rights. Day after day, bands of Barbarianswere landing from Spain. In the rear of these wandering troops of brigandsor irregular soldiers, the old enemies of the Roman peace and civilization, the Nomads of the South, the Moors of the Atlas, the Kabylian mountaineers, flung themselves upon country and town, pillaging, killing, and burningeverything that got in their way. All was laid desolate. "Countries butlately prosperous and populated have been changed into solitudes, " saidAugustin. At last, in the spring of the year 429, the Vandals and the Alani, havingjoined forces on the Spanish coast under their King, Genseric, crossedthe Straits of Gibraltar. It was devastation on a large scale this time. An army of eighty thousand men set themselves methodically to plunder theAfrican provinces. Cherchell, which had already been sorely tried duringthe revolt of Firmus the Moor, was captured again and burned. All the townsand fortified places on the coast fell, one after another. Constantinealone, from the height of its rock, kept the invaders at bay. To starve outthose who fled from towns and farms and took refuge in the fastnesses ofthe Atlas, the Barbarians destroyed the harvest, burned the grain-houses, and cut down the vines and fruit trees. And they set fire to the forestswhich covered the slopes of the mountains, to force the refugees out oftheir hiding-places. This stupid ravaging was against the interest of the Vandals themselves, because they were injuring the natural riches of Africa, the report ofwhich had brought them there. Africa was for them the land of plenty, wherepeople could drink more wine than they wanted and eat wheaten bread. It wasthe country where life was comfortable, easy, and happy. It was the granaryof the Mediterranean, the great supply-store of Rome. But their senselesscraving for gold led them to ruin provinces, in which, nevertheless, theycounted upon settling. They behaved in Africa as they had behaved in Romeunder Alaric. By way of tearing gold out of the inhabitants, they torturedthem as they had tortured the wealthy Romans. They invented worse ones. Children, before their parents' eyes, were sliced in two like animals in aslaughterhouse. Or else their skulls were smashed against the pavements andwalls of houses. The Church was believed to be very rich; and perhaps, as it had managedto comprise in its domains the greatest part of the landed estates, itwas upon it chiefly that the Barbarians flung themselves. The priests andbishops were tortured with unheard-of improvements of cruelty. They weredragged in the rear of the army like slaves, so that heavy ransoms mightbe extracted from the faithful in exchange for their pastors. They wereobliged to carry the baggage like the camels and mules, and when they gaveout the Barbarians prodded them with lances. Many sank down beside theroad and never rose more. But it is certain that fanaticism added to thecovetousness and ferocity of the Vandals. These Arians bore a specialgrudge against Catholicism, which was, besides, in their eyes, the religionof the Roman domination. This is why they made their chief attacks onbasilicas, convents, hospitals, and all the property of the Church. Andthroughout the country public worship was stopped. In Hippo, these atrocities were known before the Barbarians arrived. Thepeople must have awaited them and prepared to receive them with gloomyresignation. Africa had not been tranquil for a century. After the risingsof Firmus and Gildo, came the lootings of the southern Nomads and theBerber mountaineers. And it was not so long since the Circoncelliones werekeeping people constantly on the alert. But this time everybody felt thatthe great ruin was at hand. They were stunned by the news that some townor fortified place had been captured by the Vandals, or that some farm orvilla in the neighbourhood was on fire. Amid the general dismay, Augustin did his best to keep calm. He, indeed, saw beyond the material destruction, and at every new rumour of massacreor burning he would repeat to his clerics and people the words of the WiseMan: "Doth the firm of heart grieve to see fall the stones and beams, and deathseize the children of men?" They accused him of being callous. They did not understand him. While allabout him mourned the present misfortunes, he was already lamenting overthe evil to come, and this clear-sightedness pained him more than the shockof the daily horrors committed by the Barbarians. His disciple Possidius, the Bishop of Guelma, who was with him in these sad days, naively appliedto him the saying out of _Ecclesiastes_: "In much wisdom is much grief. "Augustin did really suffer more than others, because he thought moreprofoundly on the disaster. He foresaw that Africa was going to be lost tothe Empire, and consequently to the Church. They were bound together in hismind. What was there to do against brutal strength? All the eloquence andall the charity in the world would be as nothing against that unchainedelemental mass of Vandals. It was as impossible to convert the Barbariansas it had been to convert the Donatists. Force was the only resourceagainst force. Then in despair the man of God turned once more to Cæsar. The monk appealedto the soldier. He charged Boniface, Count of Africa, to save Rome and theChurch. This Boniface, a rather ambiguous personage, was a fine type of theswashbuckler and official of the Lower-Empire. Thracian by origin, hejoined the trickery of the Oriental to all the vices of the Barbarian. Hewas strong, clever in all bodily exercises like the soldiers of those days, overflowing with vigour and health, and even brave at times. In addition, he was fond of wine and women, and ate and drank like a true pagan. Hewas married twice, and after his second marriage he kept in the sight andknowledge of everybody a harem of concubines. He was sent, first of all, to Africa as a Tribune--that is to say, as Commissioner of the ImperialGovernment, probably to carry out the decrees of Honorius against theDonatists; and ere long he was made commander of the military forces of theprovince, with the title of Count. In reality, while seeming to protect the country, he set himself to plunderit, as the tradition was among the Roman officials. His _officium_, stillmore grasping than himself, persuaded him to deeds which the Bishop ofHippo, who was, however, anxious to remain on the right side of him, protested against by hints. Boniface was obliged to overlook much robberyand pillage on the part of his subordinates so as to keep them faithful. Moreover, he himself stole. He was bound to close his eyes to thedepredations of others, that his own might be winked at. Once become theaccomplice of this band of robbers, he had no longer the authority tocontrol them. How did Augustin ever believe in the goodwill and good faith of thisadventurer full of coarse passions, so far as to put his final hopes inhim? Augustin knew men very well; he could detect low and hypocriticalnatures at a distance. How came it that he was taken in by Boniface? Well, Augustin wanted his support, first of all, when he came as ImperialCommissioner to Carthage to bring the Donatists into line. Generally, wesee only the good points of people who do us good turns. Besides, in orderto propitiate the bishop, and the devout Court at Ravenna, the Tribuneadvertised his great zeal in favour of Catholicism. His first wife, a verypious woman whom he seems to have loved much, encouraged him in this. When she died, he was so overcome by despair that he took refuge in theextremest practices of religion--and in this, perhaps, he was quitesincere. It is also possible that he was becoming discredited at Ravenna, where they must have known about his oppressions and suspected hisambitious intrigues. Anyhow, whether he was really disgusted with theworld, or whether he deemed it prudent to throw a little oblivion overhimself just then, he spoke on all hands of resigning his post and livingin retreat like a monk. It was just at this moment that Augustin andAlypius begged him not to desert the African army. They met the Commander-in-Chief at Thubunæ, in Southern Numidia, where, no doubt, he was reducing the Nomads. We must remark once more Augustin'senergy in travelling, to the very eve of his death. It was a long anddangerous road from Hippo to Thubunæ. Before making up his mind to so muchfatigue, the old bishop must have judged the situation to be very serious. At Thubunæ, was Boniface playing a game, or was he, indeed, so crushed byhis grief that the world had become unbearable and he pondered genuinethoughts of changing his way of life? What is sure is, that he gave thetwo prelates the most edifying talk. When they heard the Count of Africaspeaking with unction of the cloister and of his desire to retire there, they were a little astonished at so much piety in a soldier. Besides, these excellent resolutions were most inconvenient for their plans. Theyremonstrated with him that it was quite possible to save one's soul inthe army, and quoted the example of David, the warrior king. They endedby telling him all the expectations they founded upon his resource andfirmness. They begged him to protect the churches and convents againstfresh attacks of the Donatists, and especially against the Barbarians ofAfrica. These were at this moment breaking down all the old defence linesand laying waste the territories of the Empire. Boniface allowed himself to be easily convinced--promised whatever he wasasked. But he never budged. From now on, his conduct becomes most singular. He is in command of all the military strength of the province, and he takesno steps to suppress the African looters. It would seem as if he onlythought of filling the coffers of himself and his friends. The country wasso systematically scoured by them that, as Augustin said, there was nothingmore left to take. This inactivity lent colour to the rumours of treason. Nor is it impossiblethat he had cherished a plan from the beginning of his command to cut outan independent principality for himself in Africa. Was this the reason thathe dealt softly with the native tribes, so as to make certain of their helpin case of a conflict with the Imperial army? However that may be, hisbehaviour was not frank. Some years later, he landed on the Spanish coastto war against the Vandals under the command of the Prefect Castinus, andthere he married a Barbarian princess who was by religion an Arian. Itis true that the new Countess of Africa became a convert to Catholicism. But her first child was baptized by Arian priests, who rebaptized, at thesame time, the Catholic slaves of Boniface's household. This marriagewith a Vandal, these concessions to Arianism, gave immense scandal to theorthodox. Rumours of treason began to float about again. No doubt Boniface took great advantage of his fidelity to the EmpressPlacidia. But he was standing between the all-powerful Barbarians and theundermined Empire. He wanted to remain on good terms with both, and then, when the hour came, to go over to the stronger. This double-faced diplomacycaused his downfall. His rival Aëtius accused him of high treason beforePlacidia. The Court of Ravenna declared him an enemy of the Empire, and anarmy was sent against him. Boniface did not hesitate; he went into openrebellion against Rome. Augustin was thunderstruck by his desertion. But what way was there to makethis violent man listen to reason, who had at least the appearances ofright on his side, since there was a chance they had slandered him to theEmpress, and who thought it quite natural to take vengeance on his enemies?His recent successes had still more intoxicated him. He had just defeatedthe two generals who had been sent to reduce him, and he was accordinglymaster of the situation in Africa. What was he going to do? The worstresolutions were to be feared from this conqueror, all smarting, and hungryfor revenge. .. . Nevertheless, Augustin resolved to write to him. His letteris a masterpiece of tact, of prudence, and also of Christian and episcopalfirmness. It would have been dangerous to declare to this triumphant rebel: "You arein the wrong. Your duty is to submit to the Emperor, your master. " Bonifacewas quite capable of answering: "What are you interfering for? Politics areno business of yours. Look after your Church!" This is why Augustin verycleverly speaks to him from beginning to end of his letter simply as abishop, eager for the salvation of a very dear son in Jesus Christ. And so, by keeping strictly to his office of spiritual director, he gained his endmore surely and entirely; and, as a doctor of souls, he ventured to remindBoniface of certain truths which he would never have dared to mention ascounsellor. According to Augustin, the disgrace of the Count, and the evils whichthis event had brought on Africa, came principally from his attachment toworldly benefits. It was the ambition and covetousness of himself and hisfollowers which had done all the harm. Let him free himself from perishablethings, let him prevent the thefts and plundering of those under him. Let him, who some time ago wished to live in perfect celibacy, now keepat least to his wife and no other. Finally, let him remember his swornallegiance. Augustin did not mean to go into the quarrel between Bonifaceand Placidia, and he gave no opinion as to the grievances of either. Heconfined himself to saying to the general in rebellion: "If you havereceived so many benefits from the Roman Empire, do not render evil forgood. If, on the other hand, you have received evil, do not render evil forevil. " It is clear that the Bishop of Hippo could scarcely have given any otheradvice to the Count of Africa. To play the part of political counsellorin the very entangled state of affairs was extremely risky. How was itpossible to exhort a victorious general to lay down his arms beforethe conquered? And yet, in estimating the situation from the Christianstandpoint alone, Augustin had found a way to say everything essential, allthat could profitably be said at the moment. How did Boniface take a letter which was, in the circumstances, socourageous? What we know is that he did not alter his plans. It wouldindeed have been very difficult for him to withdraw and yield; and morethan ever since a new army under Sigisvultus had been sent against him inall haste. A real fatality compelled him to remain in revolt against Rome. Did he believe he was ruined, as has been stated, or else, through hisfamily connections--let us remember that his wife was a Barbarian--had hebeen for a long time plotting with Genseric to divide Africa? He has beenaccused of that. What comes out is, that as soon as he heard of the arrivalof Sigisvultus and the new expeditionary force, he called in the Vandals tohis aid. This was the great invasion of 429. Ere long, the Barbarians entered Numidia. The borderlands about Hippo werethreatened. Stricken with terror, the inhabitants in a mass fled before theenemy, leaving the towns empty. Those who were caught in them rushed intothe churches, imploring the bishops and priests to help them. Or else, giving up all hope of life, they cried out to be baptized, confessed, did penance in public. The Vandals, as we have seen, aimed specially atthe clergy; they believed that the Catholic priests were the soul of theresistance. Should not these priests, then, in the very interest of theChurch, save themselves for quieter times, and escape the persecution byflight? Many sheltered themselves behind the words of Christ: "When theypersecute you in this city, flee ye into another. " But Augustin strongly condemned the cowardliness of the deserters. In aletter addressed to his fellow-bishop, Honoratus, and intended to be readby all the clergy in Africa, he declares that bishops and priests shouldnot abandon their churches and dioceses, but stay at their post till theend--till death and till martyrdom--to fulfil the duties of their ministry. If the faithful were able to withdraw into a safe place, their pastorsmight accompany them; if not, they should die in the midst of them. Thusthey would have at least the consolation of lending aid to the dying intheir last moments, and especially of preventing the apostasies whichreadily took place under the shock of the terror. For Augustin, who foresawthe future, the essential thing was that later, when the Vandal wave hadswept away, Catholicism might flourish again in Africa. To this end, theCatholics must be made to remain in the country, and the greatest possiblenumber be strengthened in their faith. Otherwise, the work of threecenturies would have to be done all over again. We must admire this courage and clear-mindedness in an old man ofseventy-five, who was being continually harassed by the complaints andlamentations of a crowd of demoralized fugitives. The position became moreand more critical. The siege lines were drawing closer. But in the midst ofall this dread, Augustin was given a gleam of hope: Boniface made his peacewith the Empire. Henceforward, his army, turning against the Barbarians, might protect Hippo and perhaps save Africa. Had Augustin a hand in this reconciliation? There is not the least doubtthat he desired it most earnestly. In a letter to Count Darius, thespecial envoy sent from Ravenna to treat with the rebel general, he warmlycongratulates the Imperial plenipotentiary on his mission of peace. "Youare sent, " he said to him, "to stop the shedding of blood. Thereforerejoice, illustrious and very dear son in Jesus Christ, rejoice in thisgreat and real blessing, and rejoice upon it in the Lord, Who has made youwhat you are, and entrusted to you a task so beautiful and important. MayGod seal the good work He has done for us through you!" . .. And Dariusanswered: "May you be spared to pray such prayers for the Empire and theRoman State a long time yet, my Father. " But the Empire was lost in Africa. If the reconciliation of the rebelliousCount had given some illusions to Augustin, they did not last long. Boniface, having failed in his endeavours to negotiate the retreat of theVandals, was defeated by Genseric, and obliged to fall back into Hippo withan army of mercenary Goths. Thus it came about that Barbarians held againstother Barbarians one of the last Roman citadels in Africa. From the end ofMay, 430, Hippo was blockaded on the land side and on the side of the sea. In great tribulation, Augustin resigned himself to this supremehumiliation, and to all the horrors which would have to be endured if thecity were captured. As a Christian, he left all to the will of God, andhe would repeat to those about him the words of the Psalm: "Righteous artThou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments. " A number of fugitive priests, and among them Possidius, Bishop of Guelma, had taken refuge in theepiscopal residence. One day, when he lost heart, Augustin, who was attable with them, said: "In front of all these disasters, I ask God to deliver this city from thesiege, or, if that be not His decree, to give His servants the necessarystrength to do His will, or at least to take me from this world and receiveme into His bosom. " But it is more than probable that discouragement of that kind wasonly momentary with him, and that in his sermons, as well as in hisconversations with Boniface, he did his utmost to stimulate the courage ofthe people and the general. His correspondence includes a series of letterswritten about this time to the Count of Africa, which manifest here andthere a very warlike spirit. These letters are most certainly apocryphal. Yet they do reveal something of what must have been the sentiments justthen of the people of Hippo and of Augustin himself. One of these lettersemphatically congratulates Boniface upon an advantage gained over theBarbarians. "Your Excellency knows, I believe, that I am stretched upon my bed, andthat I long for my last day to come. I am overjoyed at your victory. I urgeyou to save the Roman city. Rule your soldiers like a good Count. Do nottrust too much to your own strength. Put your glory in Him Who givescourage, and you will never fear any enemy. Farewell!" The words do not matter much. Whatever may have been Augustin's lastfarewell to the defender of Hippo, it was no doubt couched in language notunlike this. In any case, posterity has wished to believe that the dyingbishop maintained to the end his unyielding demeanour face to face with theBarbarians. It would be a misuse of words to represent him as a patriotin the present sense of the term. It is no less true that this African, this Christian, was an admirable servant of Rome. Until his death he kepthis respect for it, because in his eyes the Empire meant order, peace, civilization, the unity of faith in the unity of rule. IV SAINT AUGUSTIN In the third month of the siege, he fell ill. He had a fever--no doubt aninfectious fever. The country people, the wounded soldiers who had takenrefuge in Hippo after the rout of Boniface, must have brought in the germsof disease. It was, moreover, the end of August, the season of epidemics, of damp heats and oppressive evenings, the time of the year most dangerousand trying for sick people. All at once, Augustin took to his bed. But even there, upon the bed inwhich he was going to die, he was not left in quiet. People came to ask hisprayers for some possessed by devils. The old bishop was touched; he weptand asked God to give him this grace, and the devils went out of those poorcrazy men. This cure, as may well be thought, made a great noise in thecity. A man brought him another one sick to be healed. Augustin, being mostweary, said to the man: "My son, you see the state I am in. If I had any power over illnesses, Ishould begin by curing myself. " But the man had no idea of being put off: he had had a dream. A mysteriousvoice had said to him, "Go and see Augustin: he will put his hands on thesick person, who will rise up cured. " And, in fact, he did. I think theseare the only miracles the saint made in his life. But what matters that, when the continual miracle of his charity and his apostolate is considered? Soon the bishop's illness grew worse. Eventually, he succeeded inpersuading them not to disturb him any more, and that they would let himprepare for death in silence and recollection. During the ten days thathe still lingered, nobody entered his cell save the physicians, and theservants who brought him a little food. He availed himself of the quiet torepent of his faults. For he was used to say to his clergy that "even afterbaptism, Christians--nay, priests, however holy they might be, ought nevergo out of life without having made a general confession. " And the betterto rouse his contrition, he had desired them to copy out on leaves thePenitential Psalms, and to put these leaves on the wall of his room. Heread them continually from his pillow. Here, then, he is alone with himself and God. A solemn moment for the greatold man! He called up his past life, and what struck him most, and saddened him, wasthe foundering of all his human hopes. The enemies of the Church, whom hehad battled with almost without ceasing for forty years, and had reason tobelieve conquered--all these enemies were raising their heads: Donatists, Arians, Barbarians. With the Barbarians' help, the Arians were going to bethe masters of Africa. The churches, reformed at the price of such longefforts, would be once more destroyed. And see now! the authority whichmight have supported them, which he had perhaps too much relied upon--well, the Empire was sinking too. It was the end of order, of substantial peace, of that minimum of safety which is indispensable for all spiritual effort. From one end to the other of the Western world, Barbarism triumphed. Sometimes, amid these sad thoughts of the dying man, the clangour ofclarions blared out--there was a call to arms on the ramparts. And thesemusics came to him in his half-delirious state very mournfully, like thetrumpets proclaiming the Judgment Day. Yes, it might well be feared thatthe Day of Wrath was here! Was it really the end of the world, or only theend of a world?. .. Truly, there were then enough horrors and calamities tomake people think of the morrow with dismay. Many of the signs predictedby Scripture dazed the imagination: desolations, wars, persecutions of theChurch, increased with terrific steadiness and cruelty. Yet all the signsforetold were not there. How many times already had humanity been deceivedin its fear and its hope! In reality, though all seemed to shew that theend of time was drawing nigh, no one could tell the day nor the hour ofthe Judgment. Hence, men should watch always, according to the words ofChrist. .. . But if this trial of Barbarian war was to pass like the others, how woeful it was while it endured! How hard for Augustin, above all, whosaw nearly the whole of his work thrown down. One thought at least consoled him, that since his conversion, for fortyyears and more, he had done all he was able--he had worked for Christeven beyond his strength. He said to himself that he left behind him thefruit of a huge labour, a whole body of doctrine and apology which wouldsafeguard against error whatever was left of his flock and of the AfricanChurch. He himself had founded a Church which might serve as an example, his dear Church of Hippo, that he had done his best to fashion after thedivine plan. And he had also founded convents, and a library full of books, which had become still larger recently through the generosity of CountDarius. He had lessoned his clergy who, once the disasters were past, wouldscatter the good seed of Truth. Books, monasteries, priests, a sure andsolid nourishment for the mind, shelters and guides for souls--there iswhat he bequeathed to the workers of the future. And with a little joymingling with his sorrow, he read on the corner of the wall where his bedwas, this verse of the Psalm: _Exibit homo ad opus suum et operationem suamusque ad vesperum_--"Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour untilthe evening. " He, too, had worked until evening. If the earthly reward seemed to slip from him now, if all was sinkingaround him, if his episcopal city was beleaguered, if he himself, althoughstill a strong man--"he had the use of all his limbs, " says Possidius;"a keen ear and perfect sight"--if he himself was dying too soon, it wasdoubtless in expiation for the sins of his youth. At this remembrance ofhis disorders, the tears fell over his face. .. . And yet, however wild hadbeen his conduct at that time, he could descry in it the sure marks of hisvocation. He recalled the despair and tears of his mother, but also hisenthusiasm when he read the _Hortensius_; his disgust for the world andall things when he lost his friend. In the old man he recognized the new. And he said to himself: "Nay! but that was myself. I have not changed. Ihave only found myself. I have only changed my ways. In my youth, in thestrongest time of my mistakes, I had already risen to turn to Thee, myGod!" His worst foolishness had been the desire to understand all things. He hadfailed in humility of mind. Then God had given him the grace to submit hisintelligence to the faith. He had believed, and then he had understood, aswell as he could, as much as he could. In the beginning, he acknowledgedvery plainly that he did not understand. And then faith had thrown openthe roads of understanding. He had splendidly employed his reason, withinthe limits laid down against mortal weakness. Had that not been the prouddesire of his youth? To understand! What greater destiny? To love also. After he had freed himself from carnal passions, he had muchemployed his heart. He thought of all the charity he had poured out uponhis people and the Church, upon all he had loved in God--upon all he haddone, upon all the consequence of his labour, inspired and strengthened bythe divine love. .. . Yes, to love--all was in that! Let the Barbarians come!Had not Christ said: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of theworld"? So long as there shall be two men gathered together for love ofHim, the world will not be entirely lost, the Church and civilization willbe saved. The religion of Christ is a leaven of action, understanding, sacrifice, and charity. If the world be not at this hour already condemned, if the Day of Judgment be still far off, it is from this religion thatshall arise the new influences of the future. .. . And so Augustin forgot his sufferings and his human disappointments inthe thought that, in spite of all, the Church is eternal. The City of Godgathered in the wreckage of the earthly city: "The Goth cannot capture whatChrist protects"--_Non tollit Gothus quod custodit Christus_. And as hissufferings increased, he turned all his thoughts on this unending City, "where we rest, where we see, where we love, " where we find again all thebeloved ones who have gone away. All--he called them all in this suprememoment: Monnica, Adeodatus, and her who had nearly lost herself for him, and all those he had held dear. .. . On the fifth day of the calends of September, Augustin, the bishop, was very low. They were praying for him in the churches at Hippo, andespecially in the Basilica of Peace, where he had preached and worked forothers so long. Possidius of Guelma was in the bishop's room, and thepriests and monks. They sent up their prayers with those of the dying man. And no doubt they sang for the last time before him one of those liturgicalchants which long ago at Milan had touched him even to tears, and now, since the siege, in the panic caused by the Barbarians, they dared not singany more. Augustin, guarding himself even now against the too poignantsweetness of the melody, attended only to the sense of the words. And hesaid: "My soul thirsts after the living God. When shall I appear before Hisface?" Or again: "He Who is Life has come down into this world. He has suffered our death, and He has caused it to die by the fullness of His life. .. . Life has comedown to you--and will you not ascend towards Him and live?. .. " He was passing into Life and into Glory. He was going very quietly, amidthe chanting of hymns and the murmur of prayers. .. . Little by little hiseyes were veiled, the lines of his face became rigid. His lips moved nomore. Possidius, the faithful disciple, bent over him. Like a patriarch ofthe Scriptures, Augustin of Thagaste "slept with his fathers. ". .. * * * * * And now, whatever may be the worth of this book, which has been plannedand carried out in a spirit of veneration and love for the saint, for thegreat heart and the great intellect that Augustin was, for this unique typeof the Christian, the most perfect and the most admirable perhaps thathas ever been seen--the author can only repeat in all humility what wassaid fifteen hundred years ago by the Bishop of Guelma, Augustin's firstbiographer: "I do desire of the charity of those into whose hands this work shall fall, to join with me in thanksgiving and blessing to Our Lord, Who has inspiredme to make known this life to those present and those absent, and has givenme the strength to do it. Pray for me and with me, that I may try herebelow to follow in the steps of this peerless man, whom, by God's goodness, I have had the happiness of living with for such a long time. .. . " THE END