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. In his ministry he was for all alike, and he would have thought it against Christian equality to shew any special favour to Augustin. If, in the brief talks he had with the young rhetorician, he was able to gather anything of his character, he could not have formed a very favourable opinion of it. The high-strung temperament of the African, these vague yearnings of the spirit, these sterile melancholies, this continual temporizing before the faith—all that could only displease Ambrose, the practical Roman, the official used all his life to command.

However that was, Augustin, in following years, never allowed himself the least reproach towards Ambrose. On the contrary, everywhere he loads him with praise, quotes him repeatedly in his treatises, and takes refuge on his authority. He calls him his "father." But once, when he is speaking of the spiritual desolation in which he was plunged at Milan, there does escape him something like a veiled complaint which appears to be aimed at Ambrose. After recalling the eagerness with which he sought truth in those days, he adds: "If any one could have been found then to trouble about instructing me, he would have had a most willing and docile pupil."

This phrase, in such marked contrast with so many laudatory passages in the Confessions about St. Ambrose, seems to be indeed a statement of the plain truth. If God made use of Ambrose to convert Augustin, it is nevertheless likely that Ambrose personally did nothing, or very little, to bring about this conversion.



IV

PLANS OF MARRIAGE

But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on the contrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Who snatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till the very eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will be all 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 great historical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpses of it. He had given up his superficial unbelief, and yet did not believe in anything definite. He drifted into a sort of agnosticism compounded of mental indolence and discouragement. When he scrutinized his conscience to the depths, the most he could find was a belief in the existence of God and His 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 life with 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 little existence, peaceful and agreeable, one might almost say, middle-class. His present fortune, although small, was still enough for that, and he was in a hurry to enjoy it.

Accordingly, he had not been long in Milan ere he sent for his mistress and his son. He had rented an apartment in a house which gave on a garden. The owner, who did not live there, allowed him the use of the whole house. A house, the dream of the sage! And a garden in Virgil's country! Augustin, the professor, should have been wonderfully happy. His mother soon joined him. Gradually a whole tribe of Africans came down on him, and took advantage of his hospitality. Here was his brother, Navigius, his two cousins, Rusticus and Lastidianus, his friend Alypius, who could not make up his mind to part from him, and probably Nebridius, another of his Carthage friends. Nothing could be more in harmony with the customs of the time. The Rhetorician to the City of Milan had a post which would pass for superb in the eyes of his poor relations. He was acquainted with very important people, and had access to the Imperial Court, whence favours and bounties came. Immediately, the family ran to put themselves under his protection and be enrolled beneficiaries, to get what they could out of his new fortune and credit. And then these immigrations of Africans and Orientals into the northern countries always come about in the same way. It is enough if one of them gets on there: he becomes immediately the drop of ink on the blotting-paper.

The most important person in this little African phalanstery was unquestionably Monnica, who had taken in hand the moral and material control of the house. She was not very old—not quite fifty-four—but she wanted to be in her own country. That she should have left it, and faced the weariness of a long journey over sea and land, she must have had very serious reasons. The poverty into which she had fallen since the death of her husband would not be an adequate explanation of her departure from her native land. She had still some small property at Thagaste; she could have lived there. The true motives of her departure were of an altogether different order. First of all, she passionately loved her son, to the point that she was not able to live away from him. Let us recall Augustin's touching 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. She completely believed that this was her work in the world.

Beginning from now, she is no longer the widow of Patricius: she is already Saint Monnica. Living like a nun, she fasted, prayed, mortified her body. By long meditating on the Scriptures, she had developed within her the sense of spiritual realities, so that before long she astonished Augustin himself. She had visions; perhaps she had trances. As she came over the sea from Carthage to Ostia, the ship which carried her ran into a wild gale. The danger became extreme, and the sailors themselves could no longer hide their fear. But Monnica intrepidly encouraged them. "Never you fear, we shall arrive in port safe and sound!" God, she declared, had promised her this.

If, in her Christian life, she knew other minutes more divine, that was truly the most heroic. Across Augustin's calm narrative, we witness the scene. This woman lying on the deck among passengers half dead from fatigue and terror, suddenly flings back her veils, stands up before the maddened sea, and with a sudden flame gleaming over her pale face, she cries to the sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. I am sure of it!" The glorious act of faith!

At this solemn moment, when she saw death so near, she had a clear revelation of her destiny; she knew with absolute certainty that she was entrusted with a message for her son, and that her son would receive this message, in spite of all, in spite of the wildness of the sea—aye, in spite of his own heart.

When this sublime emotion had subsided, it left with her the conviction that sooner or later Augustin would change his ways. He had lost himself, he was mistaken about himself. This business of rhetorician was unworthy of him. The Master of the field had chosen him to be one of the great reapers in the time of harvest. For a long while Monnica had foreseen the exceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritter away his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there were heresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists were capturing the African basilicas from the Catholics? What, in fact, was the most celebrated rhetorician compared to a bishop—protector of cities, counsellor of emperors, representative of God on earth? All this might Augustin be. And he remained stubborn in his error! Prayers and efforts must be redoubled to draw him from that. It was also for herself that she struggled, for the dearest of her hopes as a mother. To bear a soul to Jesus Christ—and a chosen soul who would save in his turn souls without number—for this only had she lived. And so it was that on the deck, tired by the rolling of the ship, drenched by the seas that were breaking on board, and hardly able to stand in the teeth of the wind, she cried out to the 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. She never missed his sermons and "hung upon his lips as a fountain of water springing up to eternal life." And yet it does not appear that the great bishop understood the mother any better than he did the son: he had not the time. For him Monnica was a worthy African woman, perhaps a little odd in her devotion, and given to many a superstitious practice. Thus, she continued to carry baskets of bread and wine and pulse to the tombs of the martyrs, according to the use at Carthage and Thagaste. When, carrying her basket, she came to the door of one of the Milanese basilicas, the doorkeeper forbade her to enter, saying that it was against the bishop's orders, who had solemnly condemned such practices because they smacked of idolatry. The moment she learned that this custom was prohibited by Ambrose, Monnica, very much mortified, submitted to take away her basket, for in her eyes Ambrose was the providential apostle who would lead her son to salvation. And yet it must have grieved her to give up this old custom of her country. Save for the fear of displeasing the bishop, she would have kept it up. Ambrose was gratified by her obedience, her fervour and charity. When by chance he met the son, he congratulated him on having such a mother. Augustin, who did not yet despise human praise, no doubt expected that Ambrose would in turn pay some compliments to himself. But Ambrose did not praise him at all, and perhaps he felt rather vexed.

He himself, however, was always very busy; he had hardly any time to profit by the pious exhortations of the bishop. His day was filled by his work and his social duties. In the morning he lectured. The afternoon went in friendly visits, or in looking up men of position whom he applied to for himself 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 satisfy all his ambitions, he could not manage to stifle the cry of his heart in distress. He did not feel really happy. In the first place, it is doubtful whether he liked Milan any better than Rome. He felt the cold there very much. The Milanese winters are very trying, especially for a southerner. Thick fogs rise from the canals and the marsh lands which surround the city. The Alpine snows are very near. This climate, damper and frostier even than at Rome, did no good to his chest. He suffered continually from hoarseness; he was obliged to interrupt his lectures—a most disastrous necessity for a man whose business it is to talk. These attacks became so frequent that he was forced to wonder if he could keep on long in this state. 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 his youthful ambitions. As a last resort, the voiceless rhetorician would take a post in one of the administrative departments of the Empire. The idea of being 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 when we doubt ourselves.

Friendship, as always with Augustin, consoled him for his hopeless thoughts. 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 a mother who loved him, simply to live with Augustin in the pursuit of truth. Romanianus was also there, but for a less disinterested reason. The Maecenas of Thagaste, after his ostentatious expenditure, found that his fortune was threatened. A powerful enemy, who had started a law-suit against him, worked to bring about his downfall. Romanianus had come to Milan to defend himself before the Emperor, and to win the support of influential personages about the Court. And so it came about that he saw a great deal of Augustin.

Besides this little band of fellow-countrymen, the professor of rhetoric had some very distinguished friends among the aristocracy. He was especially intimate with that Manlius Theodorus whom the poet Claudian celebrates, and to whom he himself later on was to dedicate one of his books. This rich man, who had been Proconsul at Carthage, where no doubt he had met Augustin, lived at this time retired in the country, dividing his leisure hours between the study of the Greek philosophers, especially of the Platonists, and the cultivation of his vineyards and olive trees.

Here, as at Thagaste, in these beautiful villas on the shores of the Italian lakes, the son of Monnica gave himself up once more to the sweetness of life. "I liked an easy life," he avows in all simplicity. He felt himself to be more Epicurean than ever. He might have chosen Epicureanism altogether, if he had not always kept a fear of what is beyond life. But when he was the guest of Manlius Theodoras, fronting the dim blue mountains 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: "Why desire 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 charm with his talk. Like the fashionable people of all times, these designated victims of the Barbarians built, with their small daily pleasures, a rampart against all offensive or saddening realities, leaving the important questions without answer, no longer even asking them. And they said: "I have beautiful books, a well-heated house, well-trained slaves, a delightfully arranged bathroom, a comfortable vehicle: life is sweet. I don'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 was taken in the snare of easy enjoyment, and desired to resemble these people at all points, to be one of them. But to be one of them he must have a higher post than a rhetorician's, and chiefly it would be necessary to put all the outside forms and exterior respectability into his life that the world of fashion shews. Thus, little by little, he began to think seriously of marriage.

His mistress was the only obstacle in the way of this plan. He got rid of her.

That was a real domestic drama, which he has tried to hide; but it must have been extremely painful for him, to judge by the laments which he gives vent to, despite himself, in some phrases, very brief and, as it were, ashamed. In this drama Monnica was certainly the leader, though it is likely that Augustin's friends also played their parts. No doubt, they objected to the professor of rhetoric, that he was injuring his reputation as well as his future by living thus publicly with a concubine. But Monnica's reasons were more forcible and of quite another value.

To begin with, it is very natural that she should have suffered in her maternal dignity, as well as in her conscience as a Christian, by having to put up with the company of a stranger who was her son's mistress. However large we may suppose the house where the African tribe dwelt, a certain clashing between the guests was unavoidable. Generally, disputes as to who shall direct the domestic arrangements divide mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who live under one roof. What could be Monnica's feelings towards a woman who was not even a daughter-in-law and was regarded by her as an intruder? She did not consider it worth while to make any attempt at regulating the entanglement of her son by marrying them: this person was of far too low a class. It is all very well to be a saint, but one does not forget that one is the widow of a man of curial rank, and that a middle-class family with self-respect does not lower itself by admitting the first-comer into its ranks by marriage. But these were secondary considerations in her eyes. The only one which could have really preyed on her mind is that this woman delayed Augustin's conversion. On account of her, as Monnica saw plainly, he put off his baptism indefinitely. She was the chain of sin, the unclean past under whose weight he stifled. He must be freed from her as soon as possible.

Convinced therefore that such was her bounden duty, she worked continually to make him break off. By way of putting him in some sort face to face with a deed impossible to undo, she searched to find him a wife, with the fine eagerness that mothers usually put into this kind of hunt. She discovered a girl who filled, as they say, all the requirements, and who realized all the hopes of Augustin. She had a fortune considerable enough not to be a burthen on her husband. Her money, added to the professor's salary, would allow the pair to live in ease and comfort. So they were betrothed. In the uncertainty about all things which was Augustin's state just then, he allowed his mother to work at this marriage. No doubt he approved, and like a good official he thought it was time for him to settle down.

From that moment, the separation became inevitable. How did the poor creature who had been faithful to him during so many years feel at this ignominious dismissal? What must have been the parting between the child Adeodatus and his mother? How, indeed, could Augustin consent to take him from 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 longer strongly in love with his mistress, but he was attached to her by some remains of tenderness, and by that very strong tie of pleasure shared. He has said it in words burning with regret. "When they took from my side, as an obstacle to my marriage, her with whom I had been used for such a long time 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 the place where my heart stuck to hers"—cor ubi adhaerebat. He acknowledges then that the union was no longer complete, since at many points he had drawn apart. If the soul of his mistress had remained the same, his had changed: 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 forsaken woman, this poor creature whom they deemed unworthy of Augustin. She was a Christian; perhaps she perceived (for a loving woman might well have this kind of second-sight) that it was a question not only of the salvation of a loved being, but of a divine mission to which he was predestined. She sacrificed herself that Augustin might be an apostle and a saint—a great servant of God. So she went back to her Africa, and to shew that she pardoned, if she could not forget, she vowed that she would never know any other man. "She who had slept" with Augustin could never be the wife of any one else.

However low she may have been to begin with, the unhappy woman was great at this crisis. Her nobility of soul humiliated Augustin, and Monnica herself, and punishment was not slow in falling on them both—on him, for letting himself 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 was gone, Augustin suffered from being alone. "I thought that I should be miserable," says he, "without the embraces of a woman." Now his promised bride was too young: two years must pass before he could marry her. How could he control himself till then? Augustin did not hesitate: he found another 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 begged for a vision, some sign which would reveal to her how this new-planned marriage would turn out. Her prayer was not heard.

"Meanwhile," says Augustin, "my sins were being multiplied." But he did not limit himself to his own sins: he led others into temptation. Even in matrimonial matters, he felt the need of making proselytes. So he fell upon the worthy Alypius. He, to be sure, guarded himself chastely from women, although in the outset of his youth, to be like everybody else, he had tried 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, that he too began to turn his thoughts that way, "not that he was overcome by the desire of pleasure, but out of curiosity." For Alypius, marriage would 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! who will probably keep in history the presumptuous name they gave themselves: The Intellectuals.

Like us, these young Latins of Africa, pupils of the rhetoricians and the pagan philosophers, believed in hardly anything but ideas. All but ready to affirm that Truth is not to be come at, they thought, just the same, that a vain hunt after it was a glorious risk to run, or, at the very least, an exciting game. For them this game made the whole dignity and value of life. Although they had spasms of worldly ambition, they really despised whatever was not pure speculation. In their eyes, the world was ugly; action degrading. They barred themselves within the ideal garden of the sage, "the philosopher's corner," as they called it, and jealously they stopped up all the holes through which the painful reality might have crept through to them. But where they differed from us, is that they had much less dryness of soul, with every bit as much pedantry—but such ingenuous pedantry! That's what saved them—their generosity of soul, the youth of their hearts. They loved each other, and they ended by growing fond of life and getting in contact with it again. Nebridius journeyed from Carthage to Milan, abandoning his mother and family, neglecting considerable interests, not only to talk philosophy with Augustin, but to live with him as a friend. From this moment they might have been putting in practice those words of the Psalm, which Augustin ere long will be explaining to his monks with such tender eloquence: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

This is not baseless hypothesis: they had really a plan for establishing a kind of lay monastery, where the sole rule would be the search after Truth and the happy life. There would be about a dozen solitaries. They would make a common stock of what means they possessed. The richest, and among these 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, as was likely, should refuse to enter the convents with their husbands, the married men could not face the scheme of living without them. Augustin especially, who was on the point of starting a new connection, declared that he would never find the courage for it. He had also forgotten that he had many dependents: his whole family lived on him. Could he leave his mother, his son, his brother, and his cousins?

In company with Alypius and Nebridius, he sincerely lamented that this fair dream of coenobite life was impracticable. "We were three famishing mouths," he says, "complaining of our distress one to another, and waiting upon Thee that Thou mightest give us our meat in due season. And in all the bitterness that Thy mercy put into our worldly pursuits, we sought the reason why we suffered; and all was darkness. Then we turned to each other shuddering, and asked: 'How much longer can this last?'..."

One day, a slight commonplace fact which they happened upon brought home to them still more cruelly their intellectual poverty. Augustin, in his official position as municipal orator, had just delivered the official panegyric of the Emperor. The new year was opening: the whole city was given over to mirth. And yet he was cast down, knowing well that he had just uttered many an untruth, and chiefly because he despaired of ever being happy. His friends were walking with him. Suddenly, as they crossed the street, they came upon a beggar, quite drunk, who was indulging in the jolliest pranks. So there was a happy man! A few pence had been enough to give him perfect felicity, whereas they, the philosophers, despite the greatest efforts and all their knowledge, could not manage to win happiness. No doubt, as soon as the drunkard grew sober, he would be more wretched than before. What matters that, if this poor joy—yes, though it be an illusion—can so much cheer a poor creature, thus raise him so far above 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 throw overboard his philosophical lumber and set himself simply to live without afterthoughts, 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 be able to find out." This thought tormented him unceasingly. Now eager, now disheartened, 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 whole moral crisis that Augustin is about to undergo might be summed up in these few words so concentrated and so strong. No more to scatter himself among the multitude of vain things, no more to let himself flow along with the minutes as they flowed; but to pull himself together, to escape from the rout so as to establish himself upon the incorruptible and eternal, to break the chains of the old slave he continues to be so as to blossom forth in liberty, in thought, in love—that is the salvation he longs for. If it be 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 his conversion, and fastening into one solid chain the reasons which made him emerge at the act of faith: he himself perhaps, in his Confessions, has given way too much to this inclination. In reality, conversion is an interior fact, and (let us repeat it) a divine fact, which is independent of all control by the reason. Before it breaks into light, there is a long preparation in that dark region of the soul which to-day is called the subconscious. Now nobody has more lived his ideas than did Augustin at this time of his life. He took them, left them, took them up again, persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder his variable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yet it cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradiction with logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the future believer, a parallel work goes on in the feelings and in the thought. If we are not able to reproduce the marches and counter-marches, or follow their repeatedly 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 a sceptic, the kind of sceptic who regards as useless all speculation upon the origin of things, and for whom cognition is but an approximation of the true. 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: That although materialist by tendency, he admitted the divine interference in human affairs—the miracle. This is an important point which differentiates him from modern materialists.

Next, he listened to the preaching of Ambrose. The Bible no longer seemed to 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 the Scriptures, was the wisdom, the practical efficiency. Those who lived by the Christian rule were not only happy people, but, as Pascal would say, good sons, good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. He began to suspect that this life here below is bearable and has a meaning only when it is fastened to the life on high. Even as for nations glory is daily bread, so for the individual the sacrifice to something which is beyond the world is the only way of living in the world.

So, little by little, Augustin corrected the false notions that the Manichees had filled him with about Catholicism. He acknowledged that in attacking it he had "been barking against the vain imaginations of carnal thoughts." Still, he found great difficulty in getting free of all his Manichean prejudices. The problem of Evil remained inexplicable for him, apart from Manichee teachings. God could not be the author of evil. This truth 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 corrupting principle. On the contrary, all things are good, though in varying degrees. The apparent defects of creation, perceived by our senses, blend into the harmony of the whole. The toad and the viper have their place in the operation of a perfectly arranged world. But physical ill is not the only ill; 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 Christians hold that the first is the product solely of the human will, of liberty corrupted by original sin, and that the other is permitted by God as a means of purifying souls. Of course, this was a solution, but it implied a belief in the dogmas of the Fall and of the Redemption. Augustin did not accept them yet. He was too proud to recognize an impaired will and the need of a Saviour. "My puffed-out face," he says, "closed up my eyes."

Nevertheless he had taken a great step in rejecting the fundamental dogma of Manicheeism—the double Principle of good and evil. Henceforth for Augustin there exists only one Principle, unique and incorruptible—the Good, which is God. But his view of this divine substance is still quite materialistic, to such an extent is he governed by his senses. In his thought, it is corporeal, spatial, and infinite. He pictures it as a kind of limitless sea, wherein is a huge sponge bathing the world that it pervades throughout.... He was at this point, when one of his acquaintances, "a man puffed up with immense vanity," gave him some of the Dialogues of Plato, translated into Latin by the famous rhetorician Victorinus Afer. It is worth noting, as we pass, that Augustin, now thirty-two years old, a rhetorician by profession and a philosopher by taste, had not yet read Plato. This is yet another proof to what extent the instruction of the ancients was oral, resembling in this the Mussulmans' instruction of to-day. Up to now, he had only known Plato by hearsay. He read him, and it was as a revelation. He learned that a reality could exist without diffusion through space. He saw God as unextended and yet infinite. The sense of the divine Soul was given to him. Then the primordial necessity of the Mediator or Word was borne in upon his mind. It is the Word 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 beginning was the Word"—in principio erat verbum—said the fourth Gospel. But it was not only an Evangelist that Augustin discovered in the Platonist dialogues, it was almost all the essential part of the doctrine of Christ. He saw plainly the profound differences, but for the moment he was struck by the resemblances, and they carried him away. What delighted him, first of all, is the beauty of the world, constructed after His own likeness by the Demiurgus. God is Beauty; the world is fair as He who made it. This metaphysical vision entranced Augustin; his whole heart leaped towards this ineffably beautiful Divinity. Carried away by enthusiasm he cries: "I marvelled to find that now I loved Thee, O my God, and not a phantasm in Thy stead. If I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee, I was swept up to Thee by Thy beauty."

But such an abandonment could not endure: "I was not yet in a state to enjoy Thee." There is Augustin's main objection to Platonism. He felt that instead of touching God, of enjoying Him, he would be held by purely mental conceptions, that he would be always losing his way among the phantasmagoria of idealism. What was the use of giving up the illusory realities of the senses, if it were not to get hold of more solid realities? Though his intelligence, his poet's imagination, might be attracted by the glamour of Platonism, his heart was not satisfied. "It is one 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 the abyss which separates philosophy from wisdom—the one which marshals the ideas of things, the other which, ignoring ideas, leads right up to the divine realities whereon the others are suspended. The Apostle taught Augustin that it was not enough to get a glimpse of God through the crystal of concepts, but that it is necessary to be united to Him in spirit and in truth—to possess and enjoy Him. And to unite itself to this Good, the soul must get itself into a fit state for such a union, purify and cure itself of 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 shall be cured," says the Scripture, "but the heart of the proud man shall be shattered." So Augustin, the intellectual, had to change his methods, and he felt that this change was right. If the writer who wants to write beautiful things ought to put himself beforehand into some sort of a state of grace, wherein not only vile actions, but unworthy thoughts become impossible, the Christian, in like manner, must cleanse and prepare his inward eye to perceive the divine verities. Augustin grasped this thought in reading St. Paul. But what, above all, appealed to him in the Epistles, was their paternal voice, the mildness and graciousness hidden beneath the uncultivated roughness of the phrases. He was charmed by this. How different from the philosophers! "Those celebrated pages have no trace of 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 that calleth, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour!' They think it scorn to learn from Him, because He is meek and lowly of heart. For Thou hast hidden these things 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 get rid of his passions. Now Augustin's passions were old friends. How could he part with them? He lacked courage for this heroic treatment. Just think of what a young man of thirty-two is. He is always thinking of women. Lust holds him by the entanglements of habit, and he takes pleasure in the impurity 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 friends trooped to beg of him not to do anything of the kind. "They pulled me," he says, "by the coat of my flesh, and they murmured in my ear—What, are you leaving us? Shall we be no more with you, for ever? Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?... And from that instant, the thing you well know, and still another thing, will be forbidden you for ever—for eternity...."

Eternity! Dread word. Augustin shook with fear. Then, calming himself, he said to them: "I know you; I know you too well! You are Desire without hope, the Gulf without soundings that nothing can fill up. I have suffered enough because of you." And the anguished dialogue continued: "What matters that! If the only possible happiness for you is to suffer on our account, to fling your body into the voracious gulf, without end, without hope!"—"Let cowards act so!... For me there is another happiness than yours. There is something else: I am certain." Then the friends, put a little out of countenance by this convinced tone, muttered in a lower voice: "Still, just suppose you are losing this wretched pleasure for a phantasm still more empty.... Besides, you are mistaken about your strength. You cannot—no, you never can exist without us." They had touched the galling spot: Augustin knew his weakness only too well. And his burning imagination presented to him with extraordinary lucidity these pleasures which he could not do without. They were not only embracements, but also those trifles, those superfluous nothings, "those light pleasantnesses which make us fond of life." The perfidious old friends continued to whisper: "Wait a bit yet! The things you despise have a charm of their own; they bring even no small sweetness. You ought not to cut yourself off light-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 them shine before him tinted in the most alluring colours: gaming, elaborate entertainments, music, song, perfumes, books, poetry, flowers, the coolness of forests (he remembered the woods about Thagaste, and his hunting days with 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 the decree of his conscience, and he became desperate. His will, enfeebled by sin, was unable to struggle against itself. And so he continued to endure life and to be "devoured by time."

The life of that particular period, if it was endurable for quiet folk who were careful to have nothing to do with politics—this life of the Empire near its end, could be nothing but a scandalous spectacle for an honest-minded and high-souled man such as Augustin. It ought to have disgusted him at once with remaining in the world. At Milan, connected as he was with the Court, he was in a good position to see how much baseness and ferocity may spring from human avarice and ambition. If the present was hideous, the future promised to be sinister. The Roman Empire no longer existed save in name. Foreigners, come from all the countries of the Mediterranean, plundered the provinces under its authority. The army was almost altogether in the hands of the Barbarians. They were Gothic tribunes who kept order outside the basilica where Ambrose had closed himself in with his people to withstand the order of the Empress Justina, who wished to hand over this church to the Arians. Levantine eunuchs domineered over the exchequer-clerks in the palace, and officials of all ranks. All these people plundered where they could. The Empire, even grown feeble, was always an excellent machine to rule men and extract gold from nations. Accordingly, ambitious men and adventurers, wherever they came from, tried for the Purple: it was still worth risking one's skin for. Even more than the patriots (and there were still some very energetic men of this sort who were overcome with grief at the state of things), the men of rapine and violence were interested in maintaining the Empire. The Barbarians themselves desired to be included, so that they might pillage it with more impunity.

As for the emperors, even sincere Christians, they were obliged to become abominable tyrants to defend their constantly threatened lives. Never were executions more frequent or more cruel than at this time. At Milan they might have shewn Augustin, hard by the Imperial sleeping apartments, the cave where the preceding Emperor, choleric Valentinian, kept two bears, "Bit of Gold" and "Innocence," who were his rapid executioners. He fed them with the flesh of those condemned to die. Possibly "Bit of Gold" was still living. "Innocence"—observe the atrocious irony of this name—had been restored to the liberty of her native forests, as a reward for her good and loyal services.

Was Augustin, who still thought of becoming an official, going to mix in with this lot of swindlers, assassins, and brute beasts? As he studied them near at hand, he felt his goodwill grow weak. Like all those who belong to worn-out generations, he must have been disgusted with action and the villainies 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 he entertains thoughts of giving up the world. In the fogs of Milan his chest and throat became worse and worse. And then it is likely enough that he was not succeeding better as rhetorician than he had at Rome. It was a kind of fatality for all Africans. However great their reputation in their own country, 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 had made fun of his guttural Carthaginian pronunciation. The same kind of thing happened to Augustin. The Milanese turned his African accent into ridicule. He even found among them certain purists who discovered solecisms in his phrases.

But these scratches at his self-respect, this increasing disgust of men and things, were small matters compared to what was going on within him. Augustin had a sick soul. The forebodings he had always been subject to were now become the suffering of every moment. At certain times he was assailed by those great waves of sadness which unfurl all of a sudden from the depths of the unknown. In such minutes we believe that the whole world is hurling itself against us. The great wave rolled him over; he got up again all wounded. And he felt stretch forth in him a new will which was not his own, under which the other, the will to sin, struggled. It was like the approach of an invisible being whose contact overcame him with an anguish which was full of pleasure. This being wanted to open out within him, but the weight of his old sins prevented. Then his soul cried out in pain.

In those moments, what a relief it was to let himself float on the canticles of the Church! The liturgical chants were then something new in the West. It was in the very year we are dealing with that St. Ambrose started the custom in the Milanese basilicas.

The childhood of our hymns! One cannot think about that without being moved. One envies Augustin for having heard them in their spring freshness. These lovely musics, which were to sound during so many centuries, and still soar against the vaults of cathedrals, were leaving the nest for the first time. We cannot think that a day will come when they will fold their wings and fall silent. Since human bodies, temples of the Holy Ghost, will live 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 be heard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory the bewailing souls continue to sing the Te lucis ante terminum, even as in the star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up the triumphant notes of the Magnificat....

Even on those who have lost the faith, the power of these hymns is irresistible. "If you knew," said Renan, "the charm that the Barbarian magicians knew how to put into their canticles. When I remember them, my heart melts." The heart of Augustin, who had not yet the faith, melted too in hearing them: "How I have cried, my God, over the hymns and canticles when the sweet sound of the music of Thy Church thrilled my soul! As the music flowed into my ears, and Thy truth trickled into my heart, the tide of devotion swelled high within me, and the tears ran down, and there was gladness in those tears." His heart cast off its heaviness, while his mind was shaken by the heavenly music. Augustin loved music passionately. At this time he conceived God as the Great Musician of the spheres; and soon he will write that "we are a strophe in a poem." At the same time, the vivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipid metaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: Deus, Deus meus!—"O God! O my God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantom that withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actual possession 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 wept upon himself. He saw that he had not the courage to be happy with the only possible happiness. What, indeed, was he seeking, unless it were to capture this "blessed life" which he had pursued so long? What he had tried to get out of all his loves was the complete gift of his soul—to realize himself completely. Now, this completeness of self is only in God—in Deo salutari meo. The souls we have wounded are in unison with us, and with themselves, only in God.... And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with its most enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of Living Water; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbinger of peace.... But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a little yet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?..." What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how terrifying for 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 would force him out of his indecision. Instinctively, led by that mysterious will which he felt had arisen within him, he went to see, and consult in his distress, an old priest named Simplicianus, who had converted or directed Bishop Ambrose in his young days. No doubt Augustin spoke to him of what he had lately been reading, and particularly of his Platonist studies, and of all the efforts he made to enter the communion of Christ. He acknowledged that he was convinced, but he could not bend to the practice of the Christian life. Then, very skilfully, as one artful in differentiating souls, perceiving that vanity was not yet dead in Augustin, Simplicianus offered him as an example the very translator of those Platonic books which he 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 of offending his friends among the Roman aristocracy, who were still almost altogether pagan, Victorinus was a Christian only in his head. In vain Simplicianus pointed out to him how illogical his conduct was. But suddenly and unexpectedly he decided. The day of the baptism of the catechumens, this celebrated man mounted the platform set up in the basilica for the profession of faith of the newly converted, and there, like the meanest of the 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 so happily chosen to act on an imagination like his:—the statue in the Roman Forum; the platform from the height of which the orator had spoken a 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 Bishop Ambrose; he too repeated his profession of faith, and the people of Milan clapped their hands—"Augustin! Augustin!" But can a humble and contrite heart thus take pleasure in human adulation? If Augustin did become a convert, it would be entirely for God and before God. Very quickly he put aside the temptation.... Nevertheless, this example, coming from so exalted a man, made a very deep and beneficial impression. He looked upon it as a providential sign, a lesson in courage which concerned him personally.

Some time after that, he received a visit from a fellow-countryman, a certain Pontitianus, who had a high position in the Imperial household. Augustin happened to be alone in the house with his friend Alypius. They sat 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 especially the wonders of holiness wrought by Antony and his companions in the Egyptian deserts. This subject was in the air. In Catholic circles at Rome, they spoke of little else than these Egyptian solitaries, and of the number, growing larger and larger, of those who stripped themselves of their worldly goods to live in utter renunciation. What was the good of keeping these worldly goods, that the avarice of Government taxation confiscated so easily, and that the Barbarians watched covetously from afar! The brutes who came down from Germany would get hold of them sooner or later. And even supposing one might save them, retain an ever-uncertain enjoyment of them, was the life of the time really worth the trouble of living? There was nothing more to hope for the Empire. The hour of the great desolation was at hand....

Pontitianus, observing the effect of his words on his hearers, was led to tell them a quite private adventure of his own. He was at Treves, in attendance on the Court. Well, one afternoon while the Emperor was at the circus, he and three of his friends, like himself attached to the household, went for a stroll beyond the city walls. Two of them parted from the others and went off into the country, and there they came upon a hut where dwelt certain hermits. They went in, and found a book—The Life of St. Antony. They read in it; and for them that was a conversion thunder-striking, instantaneous. The two courtiers resolved to join the solitaries there and then, and they never went back to the Palace. And they were betrothed!...

The tone of Pontitianus as he recalled this conscience-drama which he had witnessed, betrayed a strange emotion which gradually took hold of Augustin. His guest's words resounded in him like the blows of a clapper in a bell. He saw himself in the two courtiers of Treves. He too was tired of the world, he too was betrothed. Was he going to do as the Emperor—remain in the circus taken up with idle pleasures, while others took the road to the sole happiness?

When Pontitianus was gone, Augustin was in a desperate state. The repentant soul of the two courtiers had passed into his. His will uprose in grievous conflict and tortured itself. He seized Alypius roughly by the arm and cried out to him in extraordinary excitement:

"What are we about? Yes, I say, what are we about? Did you not hear? Simple men arise and take Heaven by violence, and we with all our heartless learning—look how we are wallowing in flesh and blood!"

Alypius stared at him, stupefied. "The truth is," adds Augustin, "that I scarcely knew what I said. My face, my eyes, my colour, and the change in my voice expressed my meaning much better than my words." If he guessed from this upheaval of his whole frame how close at hand was the heavenly visitation, all he felt at the moment was a great need to weep, and he wanted solitude to weep freely. He went down into the garden. Alypius, feeling uneasy, followed at a distance, and in silence sat down beside him on the bench where he had paused. Augustin did not even notice that his friend was there. His agony of spirit began again. All his faults, all his old stains came once more to his mind, and he grew furious against his cowardly feebleness as he felt how much he still clung to them. Oh, to tear himself 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 a fig-tree, and with his forehead pressed against the earth he burst into tears. Even as the olive-tree at Jerusalem which sheltered the last watch of the Divine Master, the fig-tree of Milan saw fall upon its roots a sweat of blood. Augustin, breathless in the victorious embrace of Grace, panted: "How long, how long?... To-morrow and to-morrow?... Why not now? Why not this hour make an end of my vileness?..."

Now, at this very moment a child's voice from the neighbouring house began repeating in a kind of chant: "Take and read, take and read." Augustin shuddered. What was this refrain? Was it a nursery-rhyme that the little children of the countryside used to sing? He could not recollect it; he had never heard it before.... Immediately, as upon a divine command, he rose to his feet and ran back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for he had left St. Paul's Epistles lying there. He opened the book, and the passage on 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.... The flesh!... The sacred text aimed at him directly—at him, Augustin, still so full of lust! This command was the answer from on high....

He put his finger between the leaves, closed the volume. His frenzy had passed away. A great peace was shed upon him—it was all over. With a calm face he told Alypius what had happened, and without lingering he went into Monnica's room to tell her also. The Saint was not surprised. It was long now since she had been told, "Where I am, there shalt thou be also." But she gave way to an outburst of joy. Her mission was done. Now she might sing her canticle of thanksgiving and enter into God's peace.

Meanwhile, the good Alypius, always circumspect and practical, had opened the book again and shewn his friend what followed the verse, for Augustin, in his excitement, had neglected to read further. The Apostle said, "Him that 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 not presumption blind him! Yes, no doubt with all his soul he desired to be a Christian. 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 all going to make a sensational conversion like his professional brother, the celebrated Victorinus?

He knew well enough that there is a good example set by these noisy conversions which works on a vast number of people. And however "contrite and humble" his heart might be, he was quite aware that in Milan he was an important personage. What excitement, if he were to resign his professorship on the ground that he wished to spend the rest of his life in the ascetic way of the Christians!... But he preferred to avoid the scandal on one side, and the loud praise on the other. God alone and some very dear friends should witness his repentance.

There were now hardly twenty days before the vacation. He would be patient till then. Thus, the parents of his pupils would not have any ground to reproach him for leaving them before the end of term, and as his health was getting worse, he would have a good excuse to give up his post. The dampness of the climate had given him a sort of chronic bronchitis which the summer had not cured. He had difficulty in breathing; his voice was muffled and thin—so much so, that he began to think his lungs were attacked. Augustin's health really needed care. This was a quite good enough reason to interrupt his lectures. Having fulfilled his professional duties to the very end—and he assures us that it took some courage—he left the professorial chair with the declared intention of never occupying it again.

Here, then, he is free from all worldly ties. From now on he can prepare himself 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 struggling under for a long time. It is probable that once more Romanianus, who was still in Milan, came to his assistance. It will be remembered that the Maecenas of Thagaste had taken up warmly the plan of a lay monastery which Augustin and his friends had lost their heads over, and he had promised to subscribe a large sum. Augustin's retreat was a first step towards realizing this plan in a new shape. Romanianus, no doubt, approved of it. In any case, he asked Augustin to keep on giving lessons to his son Licentius. Another young man, Trygetius, begged for the same favour. Augustin therefore did not intend to give up his employment altogether. He had changed, for the present at least, from a Government professor into a private 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 him this. Verecundus thus repaid a favour which Augustin had quite recently done him. It was at Augustin's request that Nebridius, who was a friend of both, agreed to take over the classes of the grammarian, who was obliged to go away. Although rich, full of talent, and very eager for peace and solitude, Nebridius, simply out of good-nature, was willing to take the place of Verecundus in his very modest employment. One cannot too much admire the generosity and kindliness of these ancient and Christian manners. In those days, friendship knew nothing of our narrow and shabby egoisms.

Now Verecundus owned a country house just outside Milan, at Cassicium. He suggested to Augustin to spend the vacation there, and even to live there permanently with all his people, on condition of looking after the property and keeping it up.

Attempts have been made to find traces of this hospitable dwelling where the future monk of Thagaste and Hippo bade farewell to the world. Cassicium has disappeared. The imagination is free to rebuild it fancifully in any part of the rich country which lies about Milan. Still, if the youthful Licentius has not yielded too much to metaphor in the verses wherein he recalls to Augustin "Departed suns among Italian mountain-heights," it is likely that the estate of Verecundus lay upon those first mountain-slopes which roll into the Brianza range. Even to-day, the rich Milanese have their country houses among those hills.

To Augustin and his companions this flourishing Lombardy must have seemed another promised land. The country, wonderfully fertile and cultivated, is one orchard, where fruit trees cluster, and, in all ways, deep streams wind, slow-flowing and stocked with fish. Everywhere is the tremor of running water—inconceivably fresh music for African ears. A scent of mint and aniseed; fields with grass growing high and straight in which you plunge up to the knees. Here and there, deeply engulfed little valleys with their bunches of green covert, slashed with the rose plumes of the lime trees and the burnished leaves of the hazels, and where already the northern firs lift their black needles. Far off, blended in one violet mass, the Alps, peak upon peak, covered with snow; and nearer in view, sheer cliffs, jutting fastnesses, ploughed through with black gorges which make flare out plainer the bronze-gold of their slopes. Not far off, the enchanted lakes slumber. It seems that an emblazonment fluctuates from their waters, and writhing above the crags which imprison them drifts athwart a sky sometimes a little chill—Leonardo's pensive sky of shadowed amethyst—again of a flushed blue, whereupon float great clouds, silken and ruddy, as in the backgrounds of Veronese's pictures. The beauty of the light lightens and beautifies the over-heavy opulence of the land.

And wherever the country house of Verecundus may be placed, some bit of this triumphal landscape will be found. As for the house itself, Augustin has said enough about it for us to see it fairly well. It was no doubt one of 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 the frolics of mice and rats. Without any pretence to architectural form, it had been enlarged and renovated simply for the greater convenience of those who lived there. There was no attempt at symmetry; the main door was not in the 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. These baths, however simple they might be, nevertheless reminded Augustin of the decoration of gymnasiums. Does this mean that he found there rich pavements, mosaics, and statues? These were quite usual things in Roman villas. The Italians have always had, at all periods, a great fondness for statues and mosaics. Not very particular about the quality, they made up for it by the quantity. And when they could not treat themselves to the real thing, it was good enough to give themselves the make-believe in painting. I can imagine easily enough Verecundus' house, painted in fresco from top to bottom, inside and out, like those houses at Pompeii, or the modern Milanese villas.

There was no attempt at ornamental gardens at Cassicium. The surroundings must have been kitchen-garden, grazing-land, or ploughed fields, as in a farm. A meadow—not in the least the lawns found in front of a large country house—lay before the dwelling, which was protected from sun and wind by clumps of chestnut trees. There, stretched on the grass under the shade of one of these spreading trees, they chatted gaily while listening to the broken song of the brook, as it flowed under the windows of the baths. 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 air than in Milan, where the humid summer heat is crushing. His soul, yearning for retirement, discovered a retreat here in harmony with his new desires, a country solitude of which the Virgilian grace still appealed to his literary imagination. The days he passed there were days of blessedness for him. Long afterwards he was deeply moved when he recalled them, and in an outburst 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 the just.... For that country house at Cassicium where we found shelter in Thee from the burning summer of our time, Thou wilt repay to Verecundus the coolness and evergreen shade of Thy paradise...."

That was an unequalled moment in Augustin's life. Following immediately upon the mental crisis which had even worn out his body, he seems to be experiencing the pleasure of convalescence. He slackens, and, as he says himself, he rests. His excitement is quenched, but his faith remains as firm as ever. With a cairn and supremely lucid mind he judges his condition; he sees clearly all that he has still to do ere he becomes a thorough Christian. First, he must grow familiar with the Scripture, solve certain urgent questions—that of the soul, for example, its nature and origin—which possessed him just then. Then he must change his conduct, alter his ways of thought, and, if one may so speak, disinfect his mind still all saturated with pagan influences: a delicate work—yes, and an uneasy, at times even painful, which would take more than one day.

After twenty centuries of Christianity, and in spite of our claim to understand all things, we do not yet realize very well what an abyss lies between us and paganism. When by chance we come upon pagan traces in certain primitive regions of the South of Europe, we get muddled, and attribute to Catholicism what is but a survival of old abolished customs, so far from us that we cannot recognize them any more. Augustin, on the contrary, was right next to them. When he strolled over the fields and through the woods around Cassicium, the Fauns and woodland Nymphs of the old mythology haunted his memory, and all but stood before his eyes. He could not take a walk without coming upon one of their chapels, or striking against a boundary-mark still all greasy from the oil with which the superstitious peasants had drenched it. Like himself, the old pagan land had not yet quite put on the Christ of the new era. He was like that Hermes Criophorus, who awkwardly symbolized the Saviour on the walls of the Catacombs. Even as the Bearer of Rams changed little by little into the Good Shepherd, the Bishop of Hippo emerged slowly from the rhetorician Augustin.

He became aware of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium—that autumn heavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised the great winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by the roadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and the slowed water ceased to sing. Augustin strained his ears for it. His soul also was blocked, choked up by all the deposit of his passions. But he knew that soon the chant of his new life would begin in triumphal fashion, and he said over to himself the words of the psalm: Cantate mihi canticum novum—"Sing unto me a new song."

Unfortunately for Augustin, his soul and its salvation was not his only care at Cassicium: he had a thousand others. So it shall be with him throughout his life. Till the very end he will long for solitude, for the life in God, and till the end God will charge him with the care of his brethren. This great spirit shall live above all by charity.

At the house of Verecundus he was not only the head, but he had a complete country estate to direct and supervise. Probably all the guests in the house helped him. They divided the duties. The good Alypius, who was used to business and versed in the twisted ways of the law, took over the foreign affairs—the buying and selling, probably the accounts also. He was continually on the road to Milan. Augustin attended to the correspondence, and every morning appointed their work to the farm-labourers. Monnica looked after the household, no easy work in a house where nine sat down to table every day. But the Saint fulfilled her humble duties with touching kindness 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 had been her father."

Let us look a little at these "children" of Monnica. Besides Alypius, whom we know already, there was the young Adeodatus, the child of sin—"my son Adeodatus, whose gifts gave promise of great things, unless my love for him betrays me." Thus speaks his father. This little boy was, it seems, a prodigy, as shall be the little Blaise Pascal later: "His intelligence filled me with awe"—horrori mihi erat illud ingenium—says the father again. What is certain is that he had a soul like an angel. Some sayings of his have been preserved by Augustin. They are fragrant as a bunch of lilies.

The other members of the family are nearer the earth. Navigius, Augustin's brother, an excellent man of whom we know nothing save that he had a bad liver—the icterus of the African colonist—and that on this account he abstained from sweetmeats. Rusticus and Lastidianus, the two cousins, persons as shadowy as the "supers" in a tragedy. Finally, Augustin's pupils, Trygetius and Licentius. The first, who had lately served some time in the army, was passionately fond of history, "like a veteran." Although his master in some of his Dialogues has made him his interlocutor, his character remains for us undeveloped. With Licentius it is different. This son of Romanianus, the Maecenas of Thagaste, was Augustin's beloved pupil. It is easy to make that out. All the phrases he devotes to Licentius have a warmth of tone, a colour and relief which thrill.

This Licentius comes before us as the type of the spoiled child, the son of a wealthy family, capricious, vain, presuming, unabashed, never hesitating if he sees a chance to have a joke with his master. Forgetful, besides, prone to sudden fancies, superficial, and rather blundering. With all that, the best boy in the world—a bad head, but a good heart. He was a frank pagan, and I believe remained a pagan all his life, in spite of the remonstrances of Augustin and those of the gentle Paulinus of Nola, who lectured him in prose and verse. A great eater and a fine drinker, he found 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 and drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained—so his master says—all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote Augustin to Romanianus. The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the father of a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor. At Cassicium, under Augustin's indulgent eyes, the pupil turned into verse the romantic adventure of Pyramus and Thisbe. He declaimed bits of it to the guests in the house, for he had a fine loud voice. Then he flung aside the unfinished poem and suddenly fell in love with Greek tragedies of which, as it happened, he understood nothing at all, though this did not prevent him from boring everybody he met with them. Another day it was the Church music, then quite new, which flung him into enthusiasm. That day they heard Licentius singing canticles from morning till night.

In connection with this, Augustin relates with candid freedom an anecdote which to-day needs the indulgence of the reader to make it acceptable. As it gives light upon that half-pagan, half-Christian way of life which was still Augustin's, I will repeat it in all its plainness.

It happened, then, one evening after dinner, that Licentius went out and took his way to a certain mysterious retreat, and there he suddenly began singing this verse of the Psalm: "Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." As a matter of fact, he had hardly sung anything else for a long time. He kept on repeating this verse over and over again, as people do with a tune they have just picked up. But the pious Monnica, who heard him, could not tolerate the singing of such holy words in such a place. She spoke sharply to the offender. Upon this the young scatter-brains answered rather flippantly:

"Supposing, good mother, that an enemy had shut me up in that place—do you mean 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 the least shocked by it.... The truth is, that neither that place, which has so much scandalized my mother, nor the darkness of night, is altogether inappropriate to this canticle. For whence, think you, do we implore God to drag us, so that we may be converted and gaze upon His face? Is it not from that jakes of the senses wherein our souls are plunged, and from that darkness 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 sly maliciousness:

"I say, what a splendid arrangement of events to shew me that nothing happens except in the best way, and for our great good!"

This reply gives us the tone of the conversation between Augustin and his pupils. Nevertheless, however free and merry the talks might be, the purpose was always instructive, and it was always substantial. Let us not forget that the Milanese rhetorician is still a professor. The best part of his 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 of rhetorician. In the morning they went over Virgil's Eclogues together. At night they discussed philosophy. When the weather was fine they walked in the fields, and the discussion continued under the shade of the chestnut trees. If it rained, they took refuge in the withdrawing-room adjoining the baths. Beds were there, cushions, soft chairs convenient for talking, and the equal temperature from the vapour-baths close at hand was good for Augustin's bronchial tubes.

There is no stiffness in these dialogues, nothing which smacks of the school. The discussion starts from things which they had under the eyes, often from some slight accidental happening. One night when Augustin could not sleep—he often suffered from insomnia—the dispute began in bed, for the 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 out an explanation of the pauses in the sound, when Licentius shifted under the bedclothes, and reaching out for a piece of stick lying on the floor, he rapped with it on the foot of the bed to frighten the mice. So he was not asleep either, nor Trygetius, who was stirring about in his bed. Augustin was delighted: he had two listeners. Immediately he put this question: "Why do those pauses come in the flow of the stream? Do they not follow some secret law?..." They had hit upon a subject for debate. During many days they discussed the order of the world.

Another time, as they were going into the baths, they stopped to look at two cocks fighting. Augustin called the attention of the youths "to a certain order full of propriety in all the movements of these fowls deprived of reason."

"Look at the conqueror," said he. "He crows triumphantly. He struts and plumes 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 know not what beauty, in harmony with the laws of nature...."

New argument in favour of order: the debate of the night before is started rolling 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 very attentive to the sights of the world surrounding him. Cockfights were still very popular in this Roman society at the ending of the Empire. For a long time sculptors had found many gracious subjects in the sport. Reading this passage of Augustin's, one recalls, among other similar designs, that funeral urn at the Lateran upon which are represented two little boys, one crying over his beaten cock, while the other holds his tenderly in his arms and kisses it—the cock that won, identified by the crown held in its spurs.

Augustin is always very close to these humble realities. Every moment outside things start up in the dialogues between the master and his pupils.... They are in bed on a rainy night in November. Gradually, a vague gleam rests on the windows. They ask each other if that can be the moon, or the break of day.... Another time, the sun rises in all its splendour, and they decide to go into the meadow and sit on the grass. Or else, the sky darkens and lights are brought in. Or again, it is the appearance of diligent Alyphis, just come back from Milan....

In the same way as he notes these light details in passing, Augustin welcomes all his guests into his dialogues and admits them to the debate: his mother, his brother, the cousins, Alypius between his business journeys, down to the child Adeodatus. He knew the value of ordinary good sense, the second-sight of a pure heart, or of a pious soul strengthened by prayer. 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. Her son asked her to remain. Modestly she shewed her astonishment at such an honour.

"Mother," said Augustin, "do you not love truth? Then why should I blush to give you a place among us? Even if your love for truth were only half-hearted, I ought still to receive you and listen to you. How much more then, since you love it more than you love me, and I know how much you love me.... Nothing can separate you from truth, neither fear, nor pain of whatever kind it be—no, nor death itself. Do not all agree that this is the highest stage of philosophy? How can I hesitate after that to call myself your disciple?"

And Monnica, utterly confused by such praise, answered with affectionate gruffness:

"Stop talking! You have never told bigger lies."

Most of the time these conversations were simply dialectic games in the taste of the period, games a little pedantic, and fatiguing from subtilty. The boisterous Licentius did not always enjoy himself. He was often inattentive; and his master scolded him. But all the same, the master understood how to amuse his two foster-children while he exercised their intelligence. 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 brought for the children back in the basket...."

Let us remark in passing that this is the last time, before those centuries which are coming of universal intellectual silence or arid scholasticism—the last time that high questions will be discussed in this graceful light way, and with the same freedom of mind. The tradition begun by Socrates under the plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, is ending with Augustin under the chestnuts of Cassicium.

And yet, however gay and capricious the form, the substance of these dialogues, "On the Academics," "On Order," and "On the Happy Life," is serious, and even very serious. The best proof of their importance in Augustin's eyes is, that after taking care to have them reported in shorthand, he eventually published them. The notarii attended these discussions and let nothing be lost. The rise of the scrivener, of the notary, dates from this period. The administration of the Lower-Empire was frightfully given to scribbling. By contact with it, the Church became so too. Let us not press our complaints about it, since this craze for writing has procured for us, with a good deal of shot-rubbish, some precious historical documents. In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures at Cassicium have at least the value of shewing us the state of soul of the future Bishop of Hippo at a decisive moment of his life.

For these Dialogues, although they look like school exercises, reveal the intimate thoughts of Augustin on the morrow of his conversion. While he seems to be refuting the Academics, he is fighting the errors from which he, personally, had suffered so long. He clarified his new ideal. No; the search 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 in things, then it is necessary to make the soul rhythmic also and so enable it to contemplate God. It is necessary to still within it the noise of the passions. 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 the weakness of the two lads he was teaching, and also to the common run of mankind. He has not yet in these years the uncompromising attitude which ere long will give him a sterner virtue—an attitude, however, unceasingly tempered by his charity and by the persistent recollections of his reading. It was now that he shaped the rule of conduct in worldly morals and education which the Christian experience of the future will adopt: "If you have always order in your hearts," he said to his pupils, "you must return to your verses. For a knowledge of liberal sciences, but a controlled and exact knowledge, forms men who will love the truth.... But there are other men, or, to put it better, other souls, who, although held in the body, are sought for the eternal marriage by the best and fairest of spouses. For these souls it is not enough to live; they wish to live happy.... But as for you, go, meanwhile, and find your Muses!"

"Go and find your Muses!" What a fine saying! How human and how wise! Here is clearly indicated the double ideal of those who continue to live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse.



II

THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA

They stayed through the winter at Cassicium. However taken up he might be by the work of the estate and the care of his pupils, Augustin devoted himself chiefly to the great business of his salvation.

The Soliloquies, which he wrote then, render even the passionate tone of the meditations which he perpetually gave way to during his watches and nights of insomnia. He searched for God, moaning: Fac me, Pater, quaerere te—"Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father." But still, he sought Him more as a philosopher than as a Christian. The old man in him was not dead. He had not quite stripped off the rhetorician or the intellectual. The over-tender heart remained, which had so much sacrificed to human love. In those ardent dialogues between himself and his reason, it is plain to see that reason is not quite the mistress. "I love only God and the soul," Augustin states with a touch of presumption. And his reason, which knows him well, answers: "Do you not then love your friends?"—"I love the soul; how therefore should I not love them?" What does this phrase, of such exquisite sensibility, and even already so aloof from worldly thoughts—what does it lack to give forth a sound entirely Christian? Just a slight change of accent.

He himself began to see that he would do better not to philosophize so much and to draw nearer the Scripture, in listening to the wisdom of that with a contrite and humble heart. Upon the directions of Ambrose, whose advice he had asked by letter, he tried to read the prophet Isaiah, because Isaiah is the clearest foreteller of the Redemption. He found the book so difficult that he lost heart, and he put it aside till later. Meanwhile, he had forwarded his resignation as professor of Rhetoric to the Milan municipality. Then, when the time was come, he sent to Bishop Ambrose a written confession of his errors and faults, and represented to him his very firm intention to be baptized. He was quietly baptized on the twenty-fifth of April, during the Easter season of the year 387, together with his son Adeodatus, and his friend Alypius. Alypius had prepared most piously, disciplining himself with the harshest austerities, to the point of walking barefoot on the frozen soil.

So now the solitaries of Cassicium are back in Milan. Augustin's two pupils were gone. Trygetius doubtless had rejoined the army. Licentius had gone to live in Rome. But another fellow-countryman, an African from Thagaste, Evodius, formerly a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, came to join the small group of new converts. Evodius, the future Bishop of Uzalis, in Africa, and baptized before Augustin, was a man of scrupulous piety and unquestioning faith. He talked of devout subjects with his friend, who, just fresh from baptism, experienced all the quietude of grace. They spoke of the community which St. Ambrose had either founded or organized at the gates of Milan, and in comparison with a life so austere, Augustin perceived that the life he had led at Cassicium was still stained with paganism. He must carry out his conversion to the end and live as a hermit after the manner of Antony and the solitaries of the Thebaid. Then it occurred to him that he still owned a little property at Thagaste—a house and fields. There they would settle and live in self-denial like the monks. The purity of the young Adeodatus predestined him to this ascetic existence. As for Monnica, who long since had taken the widow's veil, she had to make no change in her ways to lead a saintly life in the company of her 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 bury himself in a retreat, to lead a humble and hidden life, divided between the study of the Scripture and the contemplation of God. Later on, his enemies were to accuse him of having become a convert from ambition, in view of the honours and riches of the episcopate. This is sheer calumny. His conversion could not have been more sincere, more disinterested—nor more heroic either: he was thirty-three years old. When we think of all he had loved and all he gave up, we can only bow the head and bend the knee before the lofty virtue of such an example.

In the course of the summer the caravan started and crossed the Apennines to set sail at Ostia. The date of this exodus has never been made quite clear. Perhaps Augustin and his companions fled before the hordes of the usurper Maximus, who, towards the end of August, crossed the Alps and marched on Milan, while the young Valentinian with all his Court took refuge at Aquileia. In any case, it was a trying journey, especially in the hot weather. When Monnica arrived she was very enfeebled. At Ostia they had to wait till a ship was sailing for Africa. Propitious conditions did not offer 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; it was wasted freely. The ship sailed short distances at a time, skirting the coasts, where the length of the stay at every point touched depended on the master. On board these ships—feluccas hardly decked over—if the crossing was endless and unsafe, it was, above all, most uncomfortable. People were in no hurry to undergo the tortures of it, and spaced them out as much as possible by frequent stoppages. On account of all these reasons, our Africans made a rather long stay at Ostia. They lodged, no doubt, with Christian brethren, hosts of Augustin or Monnica, in a tranquil house far out of earshot of the cosmopolitan crowd which overflowed in the hotels on the quay.

Ostia, situated at the mouth of the Tiber, was both the port and bond-warehouse of Rome. The Government stores-ships landed the African oil and corn there. It was a junction for commerce, the point where immigrants from all parts of the Mediterranean disbarked. To-day there is only left a wretched little village. But at some distance from this hamlet, the excavations of archaeologists have lately brought to light the remains of a large town. They have discovered at the entrance a place of burial with arcosol-tombs; and here perhaps the body of St. Monnica was laid. In this place of graves they came upon also a beautiful statue injured—a funeral Genius, or a Victory, with large folded wings like those of the Christian angels. Further on, the forum with its shops, the guard-house of the night-cohort, baths, a theatre, many large temples, arcaded streets paved with large flags, warehouses for merchandise. There may still be seen, lining the walls, the holes in which the ends of the amphorae used to be dropped to keep them upright. All this wreckage gives an idea of a populous centre where the stir of traffic and shipping was intense.

And yet in this noisy town, Augustin and his mother found means to withdraw themselves and join together in meditation and prayer. Amid this rather vulgar activity, in a noise of trade and seafaring, a mystic scene develops where the purified love of mother and son gleams upon us as in a light of apotheosis. They had at Ostia a foretaste, so to speak, of the eternal union in God. This was in the house where they had come on arrival. They talked softly, resting against a window which looked upon the garden.... But the scene has been made popular by Ary Scheffer's too well-known painting. 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. The sea itself, although indicated by the painter, almost blends into the blue line of the horizon. Two souls and the sky—there you have the whole subject.

It is living poetry congealed in abstract thought. The attitude of the characters, majestically seated, instead of leaning on the window-ledge, has, in Scheffer's picture, I know not what touch of stiffness, of slightly theatrical. And the general impression is a cold dryness which contrasts with 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 of the sea. The sea, symbol of the infinite, ought to be present—so it seemed to me—at the final conversation between Monnica and Augustin. At Ostia itself I was obliged to give up this too literary notion; the sea is not visible there. No doubt at that time the channel was not so silted up as it is to-day. But the coast lies so low, that just hard by the actual mouth of the Tiber, the nearness of the sea can only be guessed by the reflection of the waves in the atmosphere, a sort of pearly halo, trembling on the edge of the sky. At present I am inclined to think that the window of the house at Ostia was very likely turned towards the vast melancholy horizon of the Agro Romano. "We passed through, one after another," says Augustin, "all the things of a material order, unto heaven itself." Is it not natural to suppose that these things of a material order—these shapes of the earth with its plantations, its rivers, towns, and mountains—were under their eyes? The bleak spectacle which unrolled before their gaze agreed, at all events, with the disposition of their souls.

This great desolate plain has nothing oppressive, nothing which retains the eyes upon details too material. The colours about it are pale and slight, as if on the point of swooning away. Immense sterile stretches, fawn-coloured throughout, with here and there shining a little pink, a little green; gorse, furze-bushes by the deep banks of the river, or a few boschetti with dusty leaves, which feebly stand out upon the blondness of the soil. To the right, a pine forest. To the left, the undulations of the Roman hills expire into an emptiness infinitely sad. Afar, the violet scheme of the Alban mountains, with veiled and dream-like distances, shape indefinitely against the pearl light, limpid and serene, of the sky.