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Her shoulders were of an order far too refined to rub or be rubbed. Nevertheless, after the shortest interval consistent with self-respect, such society as St. Augustin and its neighbourhood afforded found itself enmeshed in her dainty net. Mrs. Frayling's villa became a centre, where all English-speaking persons met.
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 nobody to counsel and direct him.
"Yes, my child," answered St Aubyn, rising, and drawing the boy's hand into his own, "we will go and find Gluck, who knows, no doubt, all that has passed today, and is waiting for us at the monastery." "We must ford the torrent," said Augustin; "the bridge was carried off by last year's avalanche, but with six of us and the dogs it will be easy work."
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.
But human reasons, arranged by a mysterious Will with regard to this work, may at least prepare a soul for it. Anyhow, it cannot be neglected that Augustin, coming to Milan full of ambitious plans, there saw Catholicism treated with so much importance in the person of Ambrose. This religion, which till then he had despised, now appeared to him as a triumphant religion worth serving.
Ancient and modern civilisation are joined by it; it recalls the Pantheon and the Colosseum; it gave sanction to the Empire of Charlemagne and to that of Napoleon, it inspired Augustin, and confronted Attila; Venice is a mere modern foundation; the Church is older than Hengist and Horsa, Clovis, or Mahomet; yet it stretches over the Atlantic continent from Missouri to Cape Horn, and still goes on conquering and to conquer.
Ingres, in his striking picture of Joan of Arc, now in the gallery of the Louvre, represents her standing by the high altar, clad in her white panoply of shining steel, her banner held on high; below bows in prayer her confessor, the priest Pasquerel, in his brown robes of the Order of Augustin; and beyond stand her faithful squire and pages.
Augustin, guarding himself even now against the too poignant sweetness of the melody, attended only to the sense of the words. And he said: "My soul thirsts after the living God. When shall I appear before His face?" Or again: "He Who is Life has come down into this world.
Upon the most futile reasons, they send the wife the libellus repudii the bill repudiating the marriage as the various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state of transition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians. Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long as both parties are living.
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.
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