No More Learning

Then our
students strolled on the quays or in the Harbour Square, contemplating
the many-coloured sea, this splendour of waters at the setting sun, which
Augustin will extol one day with an inspiration unknown to the ancient
poets. Above all, they fell into discussions, commented what they had
lately read, or built up astonishing plans for the future. So flowed by a
happy and charming life, abruptly interpolated with superb anticipations.
With what a full heart the Christian penitent calls it back for us! --"What
delighted 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 of
eloquence, the comradeship, now grave now gay, the differences that left
no sting, as of a man differing with himself, the spice of disagreement
which seasoned the monotony of consent. Each by turns would instruct or
listen; impatiently we missed the absent friend, and savoured the joy of
his return. We loved each other with all our hearts, and such tokens of
friendship springing from the heart and displayed by a word, a glance, an
expression, by a thousand pretty complaisances, supply the heat which welds
souls together, and of many make one. "

It is easily understood that such ties as these had given Augustin a
permanent disgust for his rowdy comrades of a former time: he went no more
with "The Wreckers. " The small circle he took pleasure in was quiet and
cheerful. Its merriment was controlled by the African gravity. He and his
friends come before my eyes, a little like those students of theology, or
those cultivated young Arabs, who discuss poetry, lolling indolently upon
the cushions of a divan, while they roll between their fingers the amber
beads 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, and
something discreet, polite, and already clerical in their tone and manners.

In fact, the life which Augustin was at that time relishing was the pagan
life on its best and gentlest side. The subtle network of habits and daily
occupations enveloped him little by little. There was some risk of his
growing torpid in this soft kind of life, when suddenly a rude shock roused
him. . . . It was a chance, but in his eyes a providential chance, which put
the _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 as
a student, because it figured on the schedule. He unrolled the book, and
began it, doubtless with calm indifference. All of a sudden, a great
unexpected light shone between the lines. His heart throbbed. His whole
soul sprang towards these phrases, so dazzling and revealing. He awoke
from his long drowsiness. Before him shone a marvellous vision. . . . As this
dialogue is lost, we can hardly to-day account for such enthusiasm, and
we hold that the Roman orator was a very middling philosopher. We know,
however, through Augustin himself, that the book contained an eloquent
praise of wisdom. And then, words are naught without the soul of the
reader; all this, falling into Augustin's soul, rendered a prolonged and
magnificent sound. It is evident, too, that just at the moment when he
unrolled the book he was in a condition to receive this uplifting summons.
In such minutes, when the heart, ignorant of itself, swells like the sea
before a storm, when all the inner riches of the being overflow, the
slightest glimmer is enough to reveal all these imprisoned forces, and the
least shock to set them free.

He has at least preserved for us, in pious and faithful gratitude, some
phrases of this dialogue which moved him so deeply. Especially does he
admire this passage, wherein the author, after a long discussion, ends in
these terms: "If, as pretend the philosophers of old time, who are also
the greatest and most illustrious, we have a soul immortal and divine, it
behoves us to think, that the more it has persevered in its way, that is to
say, in reason, love, and the pursuit of truth, and the less it has been
intermingled and stained in human error and passion, the easier will it be
for it to raise itself and soar again to the skies. "

Such phrases, read in a certain state of mind, might well overwhelm this
young man, who was ere long to yearn for the cloister and was destined to
be the founder of African monasticism. To give his whole life to the study
of wisdom, to compel himself towards the contemplation of God, to live
here below an almost divine life--this ideal, impossible to pagan wisdom,
Augustin was called to realize in the name of Christ. That had dawned on
him, all at once, while he was reading the _Hortensius_. And this ideal
appeared to him so beautiful, so well worth the sacrifice of all he had
hitherto loved, that nothing else counted for him any more. He despised
rhetoric, the vain studies it compelled him to pursue, the honour and glory
it promised him. What was all that to the prize of wisdom? For wisdom he
felt himself ready to give up the world. . . . But these heroic outbursts
do not, as a rule, keep up very long in natures so changeable and
impressionable as Augustin's. Yet they are not entirely thrown away.
Thus, in early youth, come dim revelations of the future. There comes a
presentiment of the port to which one will some day be sailing; a glimpse
of the task to fulfil, the work to build up; and all this rises before the
eyes in an entrancement of the whole being. Though the bright image be
eclipsed, perhaps for years, the remembrance of it persists amid the worst
degradations or the worst mediocrities. He who one single time has seen it
pass, can never afterwards live quite like other people.

This fever calmed, Augustin set himself to reflect. The ancient
philosophers promised him wisdom. But Christ also promised it! Was it not
possible to reconcile them? And was not the Gospel ideal essentially more
human than that of the pagan philosophers? Suppose he tried to submit to
that, to bring the faith of his childhood into line with his ambitions as a
young man of intellect? To be good after the manner of his mother, of his
grandparents, of the good Thagaste servants, of all the humble Christian
souls whose virtues he had been taught to respect, and at the same time to
rival 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 cool
about the _Hortensius_ because he did not find the name of Christ in it. He
deceives himself, probably. At this time he was not so Christian. He yields
to the temptation of a fine phrase: when he wrote his _Confessions_ he had
not yet entirely lost this habit.

But what remains true is, that feeling the inadequateness of pagan
philosophy, he returned for a moment towards Christianity. The Ciceronian
dialogue, by disappointing his thirst for the truth, gave him the idea of
knocking at the door of the Church and trying to find out if on that side
there might not be a practicable road for him. This is why the reading
of _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 his
conversion. "Thenceforth, my God, began my upward way, and my return
towards Thee. "

He began then to study the Holy Scriptures with a more or less serious
intention to instruct himself in them. But to go to the Bible by way of
Cicero was to take the worst road. Augustin got lost there. This direct
popular style, which only cares about saying things, and not about how they
are said, could only repel the pupil of Carthage rhetoricians, the imitator
of the harmonious Ciceronian sentences. Not only had he much too spoiled
a taste in literature, but there was also too much literature in this
pose of a young man who starts off one fine morning to conquer wisdom. He
was punished for his lack of sincerity, and especially of humility. He
understood nothing of the Scripture, and "I found it," he says, "a thing
not known to the proud, nor yet laid open to children, but poor in
appearance, lofty in operation, and veiled in mysteries. At that time, I
was 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 he
had thrown aside _Hortensius_, and he went to find pasture elsewhere.
Nevertheless, his mind had been set in motion. Nevermore was he to know
repose, till he had found truth. He demanded this truth from all the sects
and all the churches. So it was, that in despair he flung himself into
Manicheeism.

Some have professed amazement that this honest and practical mind should
have stuck fast in a doctrine so tortuous, so equivocal, contaminated by
fancies so grossly absurd. But perhaps it is forgotten that there was
everything in Manicheeism. The leaders of the sect did not deliver the bulk
of the doctrine all at once to their catechumens; the entire initiation was
a matter of several degrees. Now Augustin never went higher than a simple
_auditor_ in the Manichean Church. What attracted specially fine minds to
the Manichees, was that they began by declaring themselves rationalists.
To reconcile faith with natural science and philosophy has been the fad
of heresiarchs and free-thinkers in all ages. The Manicheans bragged that
they had succeeded. They went everywhere, crying out: "Truth, Truth! " That
suited Augustin very well: it was just what he was looking for. He hastened
to the preachings of these humbugs, impatient to receive at last this
"truth," so noisily announced. From what they said, it was contained in
several large books written by their prophet under the guidance of the Holy
Ghost. There was quite a library of them. By way of bamboozling the crowd,
they produced some of them which looked very important, ponderous as
Tables of the Law, richly bound in vellum, and embellished with striking
illuminations. How was it possible to doubt that the entire revelation was
contained in such beautiful books? One felt at once full of respect for a
religion which was able to produce in its favour the testimony of such a
mass of writings.

However, the priests did not open them. To allay the impatience of their
hearers, they amused them by criticizing the books and dogmas of the
Catholics. This preliminary criticism was the first lesson of their
instruction. They pointed out any number of incoherences, absurdities,
and interpolations in the Bible: according to them, a great part of the
Scriptures had been foisted on the world by the Jews. But they triumphed
especially in detecting the contradictions of the Gospel narratives. They
sapped them with syllogisms. It is easy to understand that these exercises
in logic should have at once attracted the youthful Augustin. With his
extraordinary dialectical subtilty, he soon became very good at it
himself--much better even than his masters. He made speeches in their
assemblies, fenced against a text, peremptorily refuted it, and reduced his
adversaries to silence. He was applauded, covered with praise. A religion
which brought him such successes must be the true one.

After he became a bishop, he tried to explain to himself how it was that
he 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 what
appearance of kindness, and was like a cord about my neck. . . . The second
was those unhappy victories that I almost always won in our disputes. "

But there is still another which he mentions elsewhere, and it had
perhaps the most weight. This was the loose moral code which Manicheeism
authorized. This doctrine taught that we are not responsible for the evil
we do. Our sins and vices are the work of the evil Principle--the God of
Darkness, enemy of the God of Light. Now at the moment when Augustin was
received as _auditor_ by the Manichees, he had a special need of excusing
his conduct by a moral system so convenient and indulgent. He had just
formed 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 within
the required time. According to the notions of that age, a young man
ought to have concluded his course by his twentieth year. If not, he was
considered past mending and sent back there and then to his family.

It may appear surprising that a gifted student like Augustin did not finish
his rhetoric course sooner. But after his terms at Madaura, he had lost
nearly a year at Thagaste. Besides, the life of Carthage had so many charms
for 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 own
ambitions and qualities, urged him, as we know, to become a barrister. But
now, suddenly, all his projects for the future changed. Not only did he
give 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 a
teacher 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 bothered
about household expenses and could no longer afford to keep him at
Carthage. Besides, she had other children, a son and daughter, to start in
life. Augustin was on the point of being, if not poor, at least very hard
up. 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 sell
to others what he had bought from his masters. To live, he would open a
word-shop, as he calls it disdainfully. But as he had only just ceased to
be a student, he could not dream of becoming a professor in a great city
such as Carthage, and setting himself up in rivalry to so many celebrated
masters. The best thing he could do, if he did not want to vegetate, was to
fall back on some more modest post. Now his protector, Romanianus, wanted
him to go to Thagaste. This rich man had a son almost grown up, whom it was
necessary 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 the
youth. Furthermore, Romanianus, who appreciated Augustin's talent, must
have been anxious to attract him to Thagaste and keep him there. With an
eye to the interests of his free-town, he desired to have such a shining
light in the place. So he asked this young man, whom he patronized, to
return to his native district and open a grammar school. He promised
him pupils, and, above all, the support of his influence, which was
considerable, Monnica, as we may conjecture, added her entreaties to those
of 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 have
been extremely hard for a young man of twenty to give up Carthage and its
pleasures. Moreover, it is pretty nearly certain that at this time he had
already started that connection which was to last so long. To leave a
mistress whom he loved, and that in all the freshness of a passion just
beginning--one wonders how he was able to make up his mind to it. And yet
he did leave, and spent nearly a year at Thagaste.

One peculiar mark of the youth, and even of the whole life of Augustin, is
the ease with which he unlearns and breaks off his habits--the sentimental
as well as the intellectual. He used up a good many doctrines before
resting in the Catholic truth; and even afterwards, in the course of a
long life, he contradicted and corrected himself more than once in his
controversies and theological writings. His _Retractations_ prove this. One
might 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 a
threat of servitude. He feels dimly that his true country is elsewhere, and
that if he must settle anywhere it is in the house of his Heavenly Father.
_Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. . . . _ "Restless are our
hearts, O my God, until they rest in Thee. " Long before St. Francis of
Assisi, he practised the mystic rule: "As a stranger and a pilgrim. " It is
true that in his twentieth year he was very far from being a mystic. But he
already felt that restlessness which made him cross the sea and roam Italy
from Rome to Milan. He is an impulsive. He cannot resist the mirages of his
heart or his imagination. He is always ready to leave. The road and its
chances tempt him. He is eager for the unknown. He lets himself be carried
in delight by the blowing wind. God calls him; he obeys without knowing
where 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 departure
for Thagaste. But other more apparent reasons, reasons more patent to a
juvenile consciousness, guided him also. No doubt he was not sorry to
reappear in his little town, although he was so young, with the importance
and authority of a master. His former companions were going to become his
pupils. And then the Manichees had fanaticized him. Carried away by the
neophyte's bubbling zeal, elevated by his triumphs at the public meetings
in Carthage, he meant to shine before his fellow-countrymen, and perhaps
convert them. He departed with his mind made up to proselytize. Let us
believe also, that in spite of his dissolute life, and the new passion that
filled his heart, he did not come back to Thagaste without an affectionate
thought at the back of his head for his mother.

The reception that Monnica had in reserve for him was going to surprise him
considerably. Since her widowhood, the wife of Patricius had singularly
advanced in the way of Christian perfection. The early Church not only
offered widows the moral help of its sacraments and consolations, it also
granted a special dignity with certain privileges to those who made a vow
to refrain from sex-intercourse. They had in the basilicas, even as the
consecrated virgins, a place of honour, divided from that of the other
matrons by a balustrade. They wore a special dress. They were obliged to
a conduct which would shew them worthy of all the outer marks of respect
which surrounded them. The austerity of Monnica had increased with the zeal
of her faith. She set an example to the Church people at Thagaste.
Docile
to the teachings of her priests, eager to serve her brethren, multiplying
alms as much as she could with her straitened means, she was unfailing at
the services of the Church. Twice daily, morning and evening, she might be
seen, exact to the hour of prayer and sermon. She did not go there, her son
assures us, to mingle in cabals and the gossip of pious females, but to
hear 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 which
she herself observed. In this rigid atmosphere of his home, the student
from Carthage, with his free, fashionable airs, must have caused a painful
astonishment. Monnica felt at once that she and her son understood each
other no longer. She began by remonstrating with him. Augustin rebelled.
Things got worse when, with his presumption of the young professor
new-enamelled by the schools, the harsh and aggressive assurance of the
heresiarch, he boasted as loud as he could of being a Manichee. Monnica,
deeply wounded in her piety and motherly tenderness, ordered him to give up
his errors. He refused, and only replied by sarcasms to the poor woman's
complaints. Then she must have believed that the separation was final, that
Augustin had committed an irreparable crime. Being an African Christian,
absolute in her faith and passionate for its defence, she regarded her
son as a public danger. She was filled with horror at his treason. It is
possible, too, that guided by the second-sight of her affection, she saw
clearer into Augustin's heart than he did himself. She was plunged in
sorrow that he mistook himself to this extent, and refused the Grace which
desired to win him to the Catholic unity. And as he was not content with
losing himself, but also drew others into peril--disputing, speech-making
before his friends, abusing his power of language to throw trouble into
consciences--Monnica finally made up her mind. She forbade her son to eat
at 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 had
that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the
sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only
did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did
not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living
reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient,
he tranquilly denied, content if he had talked well and entangled his
adversary in the net of his syllogisms.

Put in interdict by Monnica, he simply went and quartered himself on
Romanianus. The sumptuous hospitality he received there very soon consoled
him 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 a
vain young man, a very full compensation.

In fact, this Romanianus roused the admiration of the whole country by his
luxury and lavish expenditure. He was bound to ruin himself in the long
run, or, at any rate, to raise up envious people bent upon his ruin. Being
at the head of the Decurions, he was the protector, not only of Thagaste,
but of the neighbouring towns. He was the great patron, the influential
man, who had nearly the whole country for his dependents. The town council,
through gratitude and flattery, had had his name engraved upon tables of
brass, and had put up statues to him. It had even conferred powers on him
wider than municipal powers. The truth is that Romanianus did not dole
out his benefactions to his fellow-citizens. He gave them bear-fights and
other spectacles till then unknown at Thagaste. He did not grudge public
banquets, and every day a free meal was to be got at his house. The guests
were served plentifully. After having eaten his dinner, they dipped in
the purse of the host. Romanianus knew the art of doing an obliging thing
discreetly, and even how to anticipate requests which might be painful. So
he was proclaimed unanimously, "the most humane, the most liberal, the most
polite and happiest of men. "

Generous to his dependents, he did not forget himself. He built a villa
which, by the space it occupied, was a real palace, with _thermæ_ walled
in precious marbles. He passed his time in the baths, or gaming, or
hunting--in short, he led the life of a great landed proprietor of those
days.

No doubt these villas had neither the beauty nor the art-value of the great
Italian villas, which were a kind of museums in a pretty, or grand, natural
frame; but they did not lack charm. Some of them, like that of Romanianus,
were built and decorated at lavish expense. Immensely large, they took
in sometimes an entire village; and sometimes, also, the villa, properly
speaking, the part of the building where the master dwelt, was fortified,
closed in by walls and towers like a feudal castle. Upon the outer gates
and the entrance door might be read in big letters: "The Property of
So-and-so. " Often, the inscription was repeated upon the walls of an
enclosure or of a farm, which really belonged to a dependent of the great
man. Under the shelter of the lord's name, these small-holders defended
themselves better against fiscal tyranny, or were included in the
immunities of their patrons. So was formed, under the cover of patronage,
a sort of African feudalism. Augustin's father, who owned vineyards, was
certainly a vassal of Romanianus.

As the African villa was a centre of agricultural activity, it maintained
on the estate a whole population of slaves, workmen, and small-holders.
The chief herdsman's house neighboured that of the forester. Through
deer-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 of
many stories, as in the Roman villas, its interior galleries, and wings to
the right and left of the _atrium_. In front lay the terraces, the gardens
with straight walks formed by closely-clipped hedges of box which led to
pools and jets of water, to arbours covered with ivy, to nymph-fountains
ornamented with columns and statues. In these gardens was a particular
place called the "philosopher's corner. " The mistress of the house used to
go there to read or dream. Her chair, or folding-seat, was placed under the
shade of a palm tree. Her "philosopher" followed her, holding her parasol
and leading her little favourite dog.

It is easy to realize that Augustin managed to stand his mother's severity
without overmuch distress in one of these fine country houses. To be
comfortable there, he had only to follow his natural inclination, which
was, he tells us, epicureanism. It is most certain that at this period
the only thing he cared about and sought after was pleasure. Staying
with Romanianus, he took his share in all the pleasant things of life,
_suavitates illius vitæ_--shared the amusements of his host, and only
bothered about his pupils when he had nothing better to do. He must have
been as little of a grammarian as possible--he hadn't the time. With
the tyrannical friendship of rich people, who are hard put to it to
find occupation, Romanianus doubtless monopolized him from morning till
night. They hunted together, or dined, or read poetry, or discussed in
the evergreen alleys of the garden or "the philosopher's corner. " And
naturally, the recent convert to Manicheeism did his best to indoctrinate
and convert his patron--so far at least as a careless man like Romanianus
could be converted. Augustin accuses himself of having "flung" Romanianus
into his own errors. Augustin probably was not so guilty. His wealthy
friend does not seem to have had any very firm convictions. In all
likelihood, he was a pagan, a sceptical or hesitating pagan, such
as existed in numbers at that time. Led by Augustin, he drew near to
Manicheeism. Then, when Augustin gave up Manicheeism for Platonic
philosophy, we see Romanianus take the airs of a philosopher. Later, when
Augustin came back to Catholicism, he drew Romanianus in his wake towards
that religion. This man of fashion was one of those frivolous people who
never go deep into things, for whom ideas are only a pastime, and who
consider philosophers or men of letters as amusers. But it is certain
that he liked to listen to Augustin, and let himself be influenced. If he
trifled with Manicheeism, the reason was that Augustin dazzled him with his
arguments and fine phrases. This orator of twenty had already extraordinary
charm.

So Augustin led a delightful life with Romanianus. Everything pleased
him--his talking triumphs, the admiration of his hearers, the flattery
and luxury which surrounded him. Meanwhile, Monnica was plunged in grief
at his conduct, and implored God to draw him from his errors. She began
to be sorry that she had sent him away, and with the clear-sightedness of
the Christian, she perceived that Romanianus' house was not good for the
prodigal. It would be better to have him back. Near her he would run less
risk of being corrupted. Through intense praying, came to her a dream
which quickened her determination. "She dreamed that she was weeping and
lamenting, with her feet planted on a wooden rule, when she saw coming
towards her a radiant youth who smiled upon her cheerfully. He asked the
reason of her sorrow and her daily tears . . . and when she told him she was
bewailing my perdition, he bade her be of good comfort, look and see, for
where she was, there was I also. She looked, and saw me standing by her
side on the same rule. "

Filled with joy by this promise from on high, Monnica asked her son to
come home. He did come back, but with the quibbles of the Sophist, the
rhetorician 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 same
rule, that means that you are going to be a Manichean. "

"No," answered Monnica. "_He_ did not say, where he is you will be, but
where you are he will be. "

Augustin confesses that this strong good sense made a certain impression
on him. Nevertheless he did not change. For still nine years he remained a
Manichee.

As a last resource, Monnica begged a bishop she knew, a man deeply read in
the Scriptures, to speak with her son and refute his errors. But so great
was the reputation of Augustin as an orator and dialectician that the holy
man dared not try a fall with such a vigorous jouster. He answered the
mother very wisely, that a mind so subtle and acute could not long continue
in such gross sophisms. And he offered his own example, for he, too, had
been a Manichee. But Monnica pressed him with entreaties and tears. At last
the bishop, annoyed by her persistence, but at the same time moved by her
tears, answered with a roughness mingled with kindness and compassion:

"Go, go! Leave me alone. Live on as you are living. It cannot be that the
son of such tears should be lost. "

_Filius istarum lacrymarum_: the son of such tears! . . . Was it indeed the
country bishop, or rather the rhetorician Augustin who, in a burst of
gratitude, hit upon this sublime sentence? Certain it is that later on
Augustin saw in his mother's tears as it were a first baptism whence he
came 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 rather
astonishing in the case of so severe a mother--this African a trifle
rough. The expressions--tears and moans and weeping--occur so often in
her son's writings, that we are at first tempted to take them for pious
metaphors--figures of a sacred rhetoric. We suspect that Monnica's tears
must 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; she
moistened the balustrade against which she leant her forehead. This austere
woman, this widow whose face nobody saw any more, whose body was shapeless
by reason of the mass of stuffs, grey and black, which wrapped her from
head to foot--this rigid Christian concealed a heart full of love. Love
such 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 strayed
from it, she should hate him and drive him out with curses--this has been
seen in Africa at all times. But that a mother should mourn at the thought
that her child is lost for another life; that she grows terror-stricken and
despairing when she thinks that she may possess a happiness in which he
will have no part, and walk in the gardens of Heaven while her child will
not be there--no, this had never been seen before. "Where I am you will
be," near me, against my heart, our two hearts meeting in the one same
love--in this union of souls, continued beyond the grave, lies all the
Christian sweetness and hope.

Augustin was no longer, or not yet, a Christian. But in his tears he is
the true son of his mother. This gift of tears that Saint Lewis of France
begged God with so much earnestness and contrition to grant him, Monnica's
son had to the full. "For him to weep was a pleasure. " [1] He inebriated
himself with his tears. Now, just while he was at Thagaste, he lost a
friend 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, but
only 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 that
they had grown up as boys together and had gone to the same schools; that
they had just passed a year together, probably at Carthage; that this young
man, persuaded by him, was become a Manichee; and that, in a word, they
loved passionately. Augustin, while speaking of him, recalls in a deeper
sense what Horace said of his friend Virgil: _dimidium animæ_--"O thou half
of my soul! "

Well, this young man fell gravely sick of a fever. As all hope was at an
end, they baptized him, according to the custom. He grew better, was almost
cured, "As soon as I was able to talk to him," says Augustin--"and that was
as soon as he could bear it, for I never left his side, and we were bound
up 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 nor
feel. But by this time he had been told of his baptism. He shrank from
me as from an enemy, and with a wonderful new-found courage, warned me
never to speak so to him again, if I wished to remain his friend. I was
so astounded and confused that I said no more, resolving to wait till
he should regain his strength, _when I would tell him frankly what I
thought_. "

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 with
his half-dead friend. The intellectual poison had so perverted his mind,
that it almost destroyed in him the feelings of common decency. But if his
head, as he acknowledges, was very much spoiled, his heart remained intact.
His friend died a few days after, and Augustin was not there. He was
stunned by it.

His grief wrought itself up to wildness and despair. "This sorrow fell like
darkness on my heart, and wherever I looked I saw nothing but death. My
country became a torture, my father's house a misery. All the pleasures
that I had shared with him, turned into hideous anguish now that he was
gone. My eyes sought for him everywhere, and found him not. I hated the
familiar scenes because he was not there, and they could no more cry to
me, 'Lo! he will come. ' as they used when he was absent but alive. . . . "
Then Augustin began to weep louder, he prolonged his weeping, finding
consolation only in tears. Monnica's tenderness was restrained; in him it
was given full vent and exaggerated. At that time, the Christian moderation
was unknown to him, as well as the measure which the good taste of the
ancients prompted. He has often been compared to the most touching
geniuses, to Virgil, to Racine, who had also the gift of tears. But
Augustin'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 with
excessive sensitiveness the least wounds, the slightest touches of love or
hate, nor is it only to give oneself with transport; but it is especially
to take delight in the gift of oneself, to feel at the moment of full
abandonment that one is communicating with something infinitely sweet,
which already has ceased to be the creature loved. It is love for love, it
is to weep for the pleasure of tears, it is to mix with tenderness a kind
of egoism avid of experiences. Having lost his friend, Augustin loathes all
the world. He repeats: "Tears were my only comfort. I was wretched, and
my wretchedness was dear to me. " And accordingly, he did not want to be
consoled. But as, little by little, the terrors of that parting subsided,
he perceived himself that he played with grief and made a joy of his
tears. "My tears," he says, "were dearer to me than my friend had been. "
By degrees the friend is almost forgotten. Though Augustin may hate life
because his friend has gone, he confesses naively that he would not have
sacrificed his existence for the sake of the dead. He surmises that what
is told of Orestes and Pylades contending to die for each other is but a
fable. Ultimately, he comes to write: "Perhaps I feared to die, _lest the
other half of him whom I had loved so dearly, should perish_. " He himself,
in his _Retractations_, condemns this phrase as pure rhetoric. It remains
true that what was perhaps the deepest sorrow of his life--this sorrow so
sincere and painful which had "rent and bloodied his soul"--ended with a
striking 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 does
ideas. When at length he regained his calm, everything appeared drab.
Thagaste became intolerable. With his impulsive temperament, his changeable
humour, he all at once hit upon a plan: To go back to Carthage and open a
rhetoric school. Perhaps, too, the woman he loved and had abandoned there
was pressing him to return. Perhaps she told him that she was about to
become a mother. Always ready to go away, Augustin scarcely hesitated.
It is more than likely that he did not consult Monnica. He only told
Romanianus, who, as he had all kinds of reasons for wanting to keep
Augustin at Thagaste, at first strongly objected. But the young man pointed
to his future, his ambition to win fame. Was he going to bury all that in a
little town?

Romanianus yielded, and with a generosity that is no longer seen, he paid
the expenses this time too.




V

THE SILENCE OF GOD


Augustin was going to live nine years at Carthage--nine years that he
squandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himself
and others--briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "And
during this time Thou wert silent, O my God!