Saint Augustin Part 3

THE ENCHANTMENT OF CARTHAGE

Amare et amari.

"To love and to be loved."

Confessions, III, i.

I

CARTHAGO VENERIS

"I went to Carthage, where shameful loves bubbled round me like boiling oil."

This cry of repentance, uttered by the converted Augustin twenty-five years later, does not altogether stifle his words of admiration for the old capital of his country. One can see this patriotic admiration stirring between the lines. Carthage made a very strong impression on him. He gave it his heart and remained faithful to the end. His enemies, the Donatists, called him "the Carthaginian arguer." After he became Bishop of Hippo, he was continually going to Carthage to preach, or dispute, or consult his colleagues, or to ask something from men in office. When he is not there, he is ever speaking of it in his treatises and plain sermons. He takes comparisons from it: "You who have been to Carthage-" he often says to his listeners. For the boy from little Thagaste to go to Carthage, was about the same as for our youths from the provinces to go to Paris. Veni Carthaginem-in these simple words there is a touch of naive emphasis which reveals the bewilderment of the Numidian student just landed in the great city.

And, in fact, it was one of the five great capitals of the Empire: there were Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria-Carthage. Carthage was the sea-port capital of the whole western Mediterranean. With its large new streets, its villas, its temples, its palaces, its docks, its variously dressed cosmopolitan population, it astonished and delighted the schoolboy from Madaura. Whatever local marks were left about him, or signs of the rustic simpleton, it brushed off. At first, Augustin must have felt himself as good as lost there.

There he was, his own master, with n.o.body to counsel and direct him. He does indeed mention his fellow-countryman, that Romania.n.u.s, the patron of his father and of other people in Thagaste, as a high and generous friend who invited him to his house when he, a poor youth, came to finish his studies in a strange city, and helped him, not only with his purse, but with his friendship. Unfortunately the allusion is not very clear. Still, it does seem to shew that Augustin, in the first days after his arrival at Carthage, stayed with Romania.n.u.s. It is not in the least improbable that Romania.n.u.s had a house at Carthage and spent the winter there: during the rest of the year he would be in his country houses round about Thagaste. This opulent benefactor might not have been satisfied with giving Augustin a good "tip" for his journey when he was leaving his native town, but may also have put him up in his own house at Carthage. Such was the atonement for those enormous fortunes of antiquity: the rich had to give freely and constantly. With the parcelling out of wealth we have become much more egoistical.

In any case, Romania.n.u.s, taken up with his pleasures and business, could not have been much of a guide for Monnica's son. Augustin was therefore without control, or very nearly. No doubt he came to Carthage with a strong desire to increase his knowledge and get renown, but still more athirst for love and the emotions of sentiment. The love-prelude was deliriously prolonged for him. He was at that time so overwhelmed by it, that it is the first thing he thinks of when he relates his years at Carthage. "To love and be loved" seems to him, as to his dear Alexandrine poets, the single object of life. Yet he was not in love, "but he loved the idea of love." Nondum amabam, et amare amabam ... amare amans....

Truly, never a pagan poet had hitherto found such language to speak of love. These subtle phrases are not only the work of a marvellous word-smith: through their almost imperceptible shades of meaning may be descried an entirely new soul, the pleasure-loving soul of the old world awakening to spiritual life. Modern people have repeated the words more than enough, but by translating them too literally-"I loved to love"-they have perhaps distorted the sense. They have made Augustin a kind of Romantic like Alfred de Musset, a dilettante in love. Augustin is not so modern, although he often seems one of ourselves. When he wrote those words he was a bishop and a penitent. What strikes him above all in looking back upon his uneasy and feverish life as a youth and young man, is the great onrush of all his being which swept him towards love. Plainly, man is made for love, since he loves without object and without cause, since in itself alone the idea of love is already for him a beginning of love. Only he falls into error in giving to creatures a heart that the Creator alone can fill and satisfy. In this love for love's sake, Augustin discerned the sign of the predestined soul whose tenderness will find no rest but in G.o.d. That is why he repeats this word "Love" with a kind of intoxication. He knows that those who love like him cannot love long with a human love. Nor does he blush to acknowledge it:-he loved-he loved with all his soul-he loved to the point of loving the coming of love. Happy intimation for the Christian! A heart so afire is pledged to the eternal marriage.

With this heat of pa.s.sion, this lively sensibility, Augustin was a prey for Carthage. The voluptuous city took complete hold on him by its charm and its beauty, by all the seductions of mind and sense, by its promises of easy enjoyment.

First of all, it softened this young provincial, used to the harder country life of his home; it relaxed the Numidian contracted by the roughness of his climate; it cooled his eyes burned by the sun in the full-flowing of its waters and the suavity of its horizons. It was a city of laziness, and above all, of pleasure, as well for those plunged in business as for the idlers. They called it Carthago Veneris-Carthage of Venus. And certainly the old Phoenician Tanit always reigned there. Since the rebuilding of her temple by the Romans, she had transformed herself into Virgo Coelestis. This Virgin of Heaven was the great Our Lady of unchast.i.ty, towards whom still mounted the adoration of the African land four hundred years after the birth of Christ. "Strange Virgin," Augustin was to say later, "who can only be honoured by the loss of virginity." Her dissolving influence seemed to overcome the whole region. There is no more feminine country than this Carthaginian peninsula, ravished on all sides by the caress of the waters. Stretched out between her lakes on the edge of the sea, Carthage lounged in the humid warmth of her mists, as if in the suffocating atmosphere of her vapour-baths.

She stole away the energies, but she was an enchantment for the eyes. From the top of the impressive flight of steps which led up to the temple of aesculapius on the summit of the Acropolis, Augustin could see at his feet the huge, even-planned city, with its citadel walls which spread out indefinitely, its gardens, blue waters, flaxen plains, and the mountains. Did he pause on the steps at sunset, the two harbours, rounded cup-shape, shone, rimmed by the quays, like lenses of ruby. To the left, the Lake of Tunis, stirless, without a ripple, as rich in ethereal lights as a Venetian lagoon, radiated in ever-altering sheens, delicate and splendid. In front, across the bay, dotted with the sails of ships close-hauled to the wind, beyond the wind-swept and shimmering intervals, the mountains of Rhodes raised their aerial summit-lines against the sky. What an outlook on the world for a young man dreaming of fame! And what more exhilarating spot than this Mount Byrsa, where, in deep layers, so many heroic memories were gathered and superimposed. The great dusty plains which bury themselves far off in the sands of the desert, the mountains-yes, and isles and headlands, all bowed before the Hill that Virgil sang and seemed to do her reverence. She held in awe the innumerable tribes of the barbaric continent; she was mistress of the sea. Rome herself, from the height of her Palatine, surged less imperial.

More than any other of the young men seated with him on the benches of the school of rhetoric, Augustin hearkened to the dumb appeals which came from the ancient ruins and new palaces of Carthage. But the supple and treacherous city knew the secret of enchaining the will. She tempted him by the open display of her amus.e.m.e.nts. Under this sun which touches to beauty the plaster of a hut, the grossest pleasures have an attraction which men of the North cannot understand. The overflowing of l.u.s.t surrounds you. This prolific swarming, all these bodies, close-pressed and soft with sweat, give forth as it were a breath of fornication which melts the will. Augustin breathed in with delight the heavy burning air, loaded with human odours, which filled the streets and squares of Carthage. To all the bold soliciting, to all the hands stretched out to detain him as he walked, he yielded.

But for a mind like his Carthage had more subtle allurements in reserve. He was taken by her theatres, by the verses of her poets and the melodies of her musicians. He shed tears at the plays of Menander and Terence; he lamented upon the misfortunes of separated lovers; he shared their quarrels, rejoiced and despaired with them. And still he awaited the epiphany of Love-that Love which the performance of the actors shewed him to be so touching and fine.

Such then was Augustin, given over to the irresponsibility of his eighteen years-a heart spoiled by romantic literature, a mind impatient to try every sort of intellectual adventure in the most corrupting and bewitching city known to the pagan centuries, set amidst one of the most entrancing landscapes in the world.

II

THE AFRICAN ROME

Carthage did not offer only pleasures to Augustin; it was besides an extraordinary subject to think about for an understanding so alert and all-embracing as his.

At Carthage he understood the Roman grandeur as he could not at Madaura and the Numidian towns. Here, as elsewhere, the Romans made a point of impressing the minds of conquered races by the display of their strength and magnificence. Above all, they aimed at the immense. The towns built by them offered the same decorative and monumental character of the Greek cities of the h.e.l.lenistic period, which the Romans had further exaggerated-a character not without emphasis and over-elaboration, but which was bound to astonish, and that was the main thing in their view. In short, their ideal was not perceptibly different from that of our modern town councillors. To lay out streets which intersected at right angles; to create towns cut into even blocks like chessboards; to multiply prospects and huge architectural ma.s.ses-all the Roman cities of this period revealed such an aim, with an almost identical plan.

Erected after this type, the new Carthage caused the old to be forgotten. Everybody agreed that it was second only to Rome. The African writers squandered the most hyperbolical praises upon it. For them it is "The splendid, the august, the sublime Carthage." Although there may well be a certain amount of triviality or of patriotic exaggeration in these praises, it is certain that the Roman capital of the Province of Africa was no less considerable than the old metropolis of the Hanno and Barcine factions. With a population almost as large as that of Rome, it had almost as great a circ.u.mference. It must further be recalled that as it had no ramparts till the Vandal invasion, the city overflowed into the country. With its gardens, villas, and burial-places of the dead, it covered nearly the entire peninsula, to-day depopulated.

Carthage, as well as Rome, had her Capitol and Palatine upon Mount Byrsa, where rose no doubt a temple consecrated to the Capitolean triune deities, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, not far from the great temple of aesculapius, a modern transformation of the old Punic Eschmoum. Hard by these sanctuaries, the Proconsul's palace dominated Carthage from the height of the acclivity of the Acropolis. The Forum was at the foot of the hill, probably in the neighbourhood of the ports-a Forum built and arranged in the Roman way, with its shops of bankers and money-changers placed under the circular galleries, with the traditional image of Marsyas, and a number of statues of local celebrities. Apuleius no doubt had his there. Further off was the Harbour Square, where gathered foreigners recently landed and the idlers of the city in search of news, and where the booksellers offered the new books and pamphlets. There was to be seen one of the curiosities of Carthage-a mosaic representing fabulous monsters, men without heads, and men with only one leg and one foot-a huge foot under which, lying upon their backs, they sheltered from the sun, as under a parasol. On account of this feature they were called the sciapodes. Augustin, who like everybody else had paused before these grotesque figures, recalls them somewhere to his readers.... Beside the sea, in the lower town and upon the two near hills of the Acropolis, were a number of detached buildings that the old authors have preserved the names of and briefly described. Thanks to the zeal of archaeologists, it is now become impossible to tell where they stood.

The pagan sanctuaries were numerous. That of the G.o.ddess Coelestis, the great patroness of Carthage, occupied a s.p.a.ce of five thousand feet. It comprised, besides the actual [Greek: hieron], where stood the image of the G.o.ddess, gardens, sacred groves, and courts surrounded with columns. The ancient Phoenician Moloch had also his temple under the name of Saturn. They called him The Old One, so Augustin tells us, and his worshippers were falling away. On the other hand, Carthage had another sanctuary which was very fashionable, a Serapeum as at Alexandria, where were manifested the pomps of the Egyptian ritual, celebrated by Apuleius. Neighbouring the holy places, came the places of amus.e.m.e.nt: the theatre, the Odeum, circus, stadium, and amphitheatre-this last, of equal dimensions with the Colosseum at Rome, its gallery rising upon gallery, and its realistic sculptures of animals and artisans. Then there were the buildings for the public service: the immense cisterns of the East and the Malga, the great aqueduct, which, after being carried along a distance of fifty-five miles, emptied the water of the Zaghouan into the reservoirs at Carthage. Finally, there were the Baths, some of which we know-those of Antoninus and of Maximia.n.u.s, and those of Gargilius, where one of the most important Councils known to the history of the African Church a.s.sembled. There were likewise many Christian basilicas at the time of Augustin. The authors mention seventeen: it is likely there were more. That of Damous-el-Karita, the only one of which considerable traces have been found, was vast and richly decorated, and was perhaps the cathedral of Carthage.

What other buildings there were are utterly lost to history. It may be conjectured, however, that Carthage, as well as Rome, had a septizonium-a decorative building with peristyles one above the other which surrounded a reservoir. In fact, it is claimed that the one at Rome was copied from Carthage. Straight streets paved with large flags intersected around these buildings, forming a network of long avenues, very bright and ventilated. Some of them were celebrated in the ancient world either for their beauty or the animation of their trade: the street of the Jewellers, the street of Health, of Saturn, of Coelestis, too, or of Juno. The fig and vegetable markets and the public granaries were also some of the main centres of Carthaginian life.

It is unquestionable that Carthage, with its buildings and statues, its squares, avenues and public gardens, looked like a large capital, and was a perfect example of that ideal of rather brutal magnificence and strength which the Romans obtruded everywhere.

And even while it dazzled the young provincial from Thagaste, the African Rome shewed him the virtue of order-social and political order. Carthage, the metropolis of Western Africa, maintained an army of officials who handled the government in its smallest details. First of all, there were the representatives of the central power, the imperial rulers-the Proconsul, a sort of vice-emperor, who was surrounded by a full court, a civil and military staff, a privy council, an officium which included a crowd of dignitaries and subaltern clerks. Then there was the Propraetor of Africa who, being in control of the government of the whole African province, had an officium still larger perhaps than the Proconsul's. After them came the city magistrates, who were aided in their functions by the Council of the Decurions-the Senate of Carthage. These Carthaginian senators cut a considerable figure: for them their colleagues at Rome were full of airs and graces, and the Emperors endeavoured to keep them in a good-humour. All the details of city government came under their supervision: the slaughter-houses, buildings, the gathering of munic.i.p.al taxes, and the police, which comprised even the guardians of the Forum. Then there were the army and navy. The home port of a grain-carrying fleet which conveyed the African cereals to Ostia, Carthage could starve Rome if she liked. The grain and oil of all countries lay in her docks-the storehouses of the state provisions, which were in charge of a special prefect who had under his orders a whole corporation of overseers and clerks.

Augustin must have heard a good deal of grumbling at Carthage against this excess of officialism. But, all the same, so well-governed a city was a very good school for a young man who was to combine later the duties of bishop, judge, and governor. The blessings of order, of what was called "the Roman peace" no doubt impressed him the more, as he himself came from a turbulent district often turned upside down by the quarrels of religious sects and by the depredations of the nomads-a boundary-land of the Sahara regions where it was much harder to bring the central government into play than in Carthage and the coast-towns. To appreciate the beauty of government, there is nothing like living in a country where all is at the mercy of force or the first-comer's will. Such of the Barbarians who came in contact with Roman civilization were overcome with admiration for the good order that it established. But what astonished them more than anything else was that the Empire was everywhere.

No man, whatever his race or country, could help feeling proud to belong to the Roman city. He was at home in all the countries in the world subject to Rome. Our Europe, split into nationalities, can hardly understand now this feeling of pride, so different from our narrow patriotisms. The way to feel something of it is to go to the colonies: out there the least of us may believe himself a sovereign, simply from the fact that he is a subject of the governing country. This feeling was very strong in the old world. Carthage, where the striking effect of the Empire appeared in all its brilliancy, would increase it in Augustin. He had only to look around him to value the extent of the privilege conferred by Rome on her citizens. Men coming from all countries, without exception of race, were, so to speak, made partners of the Empire and collaborated in the grandeur of the Roman scheme. If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebrated Symmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented, the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The Count Theodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus in Mauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up, for the most part, of Gauls. Later on, under Arcadius, another Gaul, Rufinus, shall be master of the whole of the East.

An active mind like Augustin's could not remain indifferent before this spectacle of the world thrown open by Rome to all men of talent. He had the soul of a poet, quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the Empire of the Caesars.

Still, it is desirable not to fall into error upon this Roman unity. Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions, special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere. The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid character of this country without unity was ill.u.s.trated by the streaks found in the Carthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the n.i.g.g.e.r, brought from his native Soudan by the slave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed, of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion. And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas. Augustin, who was at heart a mystic, but also a dialectician extremely fond of showy discussions, found in Carthage a lively summary of the religions and philosophies of his day. During these years of study and reflection he captured booty of knowledge and observation which he would know how to make use of in the future.

In the Carthage sanctuaries and schools, in the squares and the streets, he could see pa.s.s the disciples of all the systems, the props of all the superst.i.tions, the devotees of all the religions. He heard the shrill clamour of disputes, the tumult of fights and riots. When a man was at the end of his arguments, he knocked down his opponent. The authorities had a good deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician, must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactly improvise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited the enlightenment of the truth, he studied the Carthaginian Babel.

First of all, there was the official religion, the most obvious and perhaps the most brilliant, that of the Divinity of the Emperors, which was still kept up even under the Christian Caesars. Each year, at the end of October, the elected delegates of the entire province, having at their head the Sacerdos province, the provincial priest, arrived at Carthage. Their leader, clad in a robe broidered with palms, gold crown on head, made his solemn entry into the city. It was a perfect invasion, each member dragging in his wake a mob of clients and servants. The Africans, with their taste for pomp and colour, seized the chance to give themselves over to a display of ruinous sumptuosities: rich dresses, expensive horses splendidly caparisoned, processions, sacrifices, public banquets, games at the circus and amphitheatre. These strangers so overcrowded the city that the imperial Government had to forbid them, under severe penalties, to stay longer than five days. A very prudent measure! At these times, collisions were inevitable between pagans and Christians. It was desirable to scatter such crowds as soon as possible, for riots were always smouldering in their midst.

No less thronged were the festivals of the Virgin of Heaven. A survival of the national religion, these feasts were dear to the hearts of the Carthaginians. Augustin went to them with his fellow-students. "We trooped there from every quarter," he says. There was a great gathering of people in the interior court which led up to the temple. The statue, taken from its sanctuary, was placed before the peristyle upon a kind of repository. Wantons, arrayed with barbarous lavishness, danced around the holy image; actors performed and sang hymns. "Our eager eyes," Augustin adds maliciously, "rested in turn on the G.o.ddess, and on the girls, her adorers." The Great Mother of the G.o.ds, the G.o.ddess of Mount Berecyntus, was worshipped with similar license. Every year the people of Carthage went to wash her solemnly in the sea. Her statue, carried in a splendid litter, robed with precious stuffs, curled and farded, pa.s.sed through the streets of the city, with its guard of mummers and Corybants. These last, "with hair greasy from pomade, pale faces, and a loose and effeminate walk, held out bowls for alms to the onlookers."

The devotion to Isis was yet another excuse for processions: the Serapeum was a rival attraction to the temple of the Heavenly Maiden. If we may trust Tertullian, the Africans swore only by Serapis. Possibly Mithras had also worshippers in Carthage. Anyhow, the occult religions were fully represented there. Miracle-working was becoming more and more the basis even of paganism. Never had the soothsayers been more flourishing. Everybody, in secret, pried into the entrails of the sacrificial victims, or used magic spells. As to the wizards and astrologists, they did business openly. Augustin himself consulted them, like all the Carthaginians. The public credulity had no limits.

On the opposite side from the pagan worship, the sects which had sprung from Christianity sprouted. True, Africa has given birth to but a small number of heresies: the Africans had not the subtle mind of the Orientals and they were not given to theorizing. But a good many of the Eastern heresies had got into Carthage. Augustin must have still met Arians there, although at this period Arianism was dying out in Africa. What is certain is that orthodox Catholicism was in a very critical state. The Donatists captured its congregations and churches; they were unquestionably in the majority. They raised altar against altar. If Genethlius was the Catholic bishop, the Donatist bishop was Parmenia.n.u.s. And they claimed to be more Catholic than their opponents. They boasted that they were the Church, the single, the unique Church, the Church of Christ. But these schismatics themselves were already splitting up into many sects. At the time Augustin was studying at Carthage, Rogatus, Bishop of Tenes, had just broken publicly with Parmenian's party. Another Donatist, Tyconius, published books wherein he traversed many principles dear to his fellow-religionists. Doubt darkened consciences. Amid these controversies, where was the truth? Among whom did the Apostolic tradition dwell?

To put the finishing touch on this anarchy, a sect which likewise derived from Christianity-Manicheeism-began to have numerous adepts in Africa. Watched with suspicion by the Government, it concealed part of its doctrine, the most scandalous and subversive. But the very mystery which enveloped it, helped it to get adherents.

Among all these apostles preaching their gospel, these devotees beating the drum before their G.o.d, these theologians reciprocally insulting and excommunicating one another, Augustin brought the superficial scepticism of his eighteenth year. He wanted no more of the religion in which his mother had brought him up. He was a good talker, a clever dialectician; he was in a hurry to emanc.i.p.ate himself, to win freedom for his way of thinking as for his way of life; and he meant to enjoy his youth. With such gifts, and with such dispositions, he could only choose among all these doctrines that which would help most the qualities of his mind, at once flattering his intellectual pretensions, and leaving his pleasure-loving instincts a loose rein.

III

THE CARTHAGE STUDENT

However strong were the attractions of the great city, Augustin well knew that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future-make his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to be a student who worked.

With his extraordinary facility, he stood out at once among his fellow-students. In the rhetoric school, where he attended lectures, he was, he tells us, not only at the top, but he was the leader of his companions. He led in everything. At that time, rhetoric was extremely far-reaching: it had come to take in all the divisions of education, including science and philosophy. Augustin claims to have learned all that the masters of his time had to teach: rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, music, mathematics. Having gone through the whole scholastic system, he thought of studying law, and aided by his gift of words, to become a barrister. For a gifted young man it was the shortest and surest road to money and honours.

Unhappily for him, hardly was he settled down at Carthage than his father died. This made his future again problematical. How was he to keep up his studies without the sums coming from his father? The affairs of Patricius must have been left in the most parlous condition. But Monnica, clinging to her ambitious plans for her son, knew how to triumph over all difficulties, and she continued to send Augustin money. Romania.n.u.s, the Maecenas of Thagaste, who was doubtless applied to by her, came once more to the rescue of the hard-up student. The young man, set at ease about his expenses, resumed light-heartedly his studious and dissipated life.

As a matter of fact, this family bereavement does not seem to have caused him much grief. In the Confessions he mentions the death of his father in a few words, and, so to speak, in parenthesis, as an event long foreseen without much importance. And yet he owed him a great deal. Patricius was hard pressed, and he took immense trouble to provide the means for his son's education. But with the fine egotism of youth, Augustin perhaps thought it enough to have profited by his father's sacrifices, and dispensed himself from grat.i.tude. In any case, his affection for his father must have been rather lukewarm; the natural differences between them ran too deep. In these years, Monnica filled all the heart of Augustin.

But the influence of Monnica herself was very slight upon this grown-up youth, eighteen years old. He had forgotten her lessons, and it did not trouble him much if his conduct added to the worries of the widow, who was now struggling with her husband's creditors. At heart he was a good son and he deeply loved his mother, but inevitably the pressure of the life around him swept him along.

He has pictured his companions for us, after his conversion, as terrible blackguards. No doubt he is too severe. Those young men were neither better nor worse than elsewhere. They were rowdy, as they were in the other cities of the Empire, and as one always is at that age. Imperial regulations enjoined the police to have an eye on the students, to note their conduct and what company they kept. They were not to become members of prohibited societies, not to go too often to the theatre, nor to waste their time in raking and feastings. If their conduct became too outrageous, they were to be beaten with rods and sent back to their parents. At Carthage there was a hard-living set of men who called themselves "The Wreckers." Their great pleasure was to go and make a row at a professor's lecture; they would burst noisily into the cla.s.sroom and smash up anything they could lay hold of. They amused themselves also by "ragging" the freshmen, jeering at their simplicity, and playing them a thousand tricks. Things haven't much changed since then. The fellow-students of Augustin were so like students of to-day that the most modern terms suggest themselves to describe their performances.

Augustin, who was on the whole well conducted, and, as behoved a future professor, had a respect for discipline, disapproved of "The Wreckers" and their violence. This did not prevent him from enjoying himself in their society. He was overcome with shame because he could not keep pace with them-we must believe it at least, since he tells us so himself. With a certain lack of a.s.surance, blended however with much juvenile vanity, he joined the band. He listened to that counsel of vulgar wisdom which is disastrous to souls like his: "Do as others do." He accordingly did do as the others; he knew all their debauchery, or he imagined he did, for however low he went, he was never able to do anything mean. He was then so far from the faith that he arranged love-trysts in the churches. "I was not afraid to think of my l.u.s.t, and plan a scheme for securing the deadly fruit of sin, even within the walls of Thy church during the celebration of Thy mysteries." We might be reading the confession of a sensualist of to-day. One grows astonished at these morals, at once so old and so modern. What, already! These young Christian basilicas, but newly sprung out of the earth, where the men were strictly separated from the women-were they already become places of a.s.signation, where love-letters were slipped into hands, and procuresses sold their furtive services!...

At length the great happiness for which Augustin had so long been sighing was granted him: he loved and he was loved.

He loved as he indeed was able to love, with all the impetuosity of his nature and all the fire of his temperament, with all his heart and all his senses. "I plunged headlong into love, whose fetters I longed to wear." But as he went at once to extremes, as he meant to give himself altogether, and expected all in return, he grew irritated at not receiving this same kind of love. It was never enough love for him. Yet he was loved, and the very certainty of this love, always too poor to his mind, exasperated the violence and pertinacity of his desire. "Because I was loved, I proudly riveted round myself the chain of woe, to be soon scourged with the red-hot iron rods of jealousy, torn by suspicions, fears, anger, and quarrels." This was pa.s.sion with chorus and orchestra, a little theatrical, with its violences, its alternations between fury and ecstasy, such as an African, steeped in romantic literature, would conceive it. Deceived, he flung himself in desperate pursuit of the ever-flitting love. He had certainly more than one pa.s.sion. Each one left him more hungry than the last.

He was sensual, and he felt each time how brief is pleasure, in what a limited circle all enjoyment turns. He was tender, eager to give himself; and he saw plainly that one never gives oneself quite altogether, that even in the maddest hours of surrender one always reserves oneself in secret, keeping for oneself something of oneself; and he felt that most of the time his tenderness got no answer. When the joyous heart brings the offering of its love, the heart of her he loves is absent. And when it is there, on the edge of the lips, decked and smiling to meet the loved one, it is the other who is absent. Almost never do they join together, and they never join together altogether. And so this Love, which claims to be constant and even eternal, ought to be, if it would prolong itself, a continual act of faith, and hope, and charity. To believe in it in spite of its darkening and falling away; to hope its return, often against all evidence; to pardon its injustices and sometimes its foul actions-how many are capable of such abnegation? Augustin went through all that. He was in despair about it. And then, the nostalgia of predestined souls took hold of him. He had an indistinct feeling that these human loves were unworthy of him, and that if he must have a master, he was born to serve another Master. He had a desire to shake off the plat.i.tude of here below, the melancholy fen where stagnated what he calls "the marsh of the flesh"; to escape, in a word, from the wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; to burn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go and pitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where-upon some unapproachable mountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches of light and s.p.a.ce....