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Updated: June 19, 2025
Even now in the towns our police are obliged to take measures against these ferocious children. In Augustin's time, at Cherchell, which is the ancient Caesarea Mauretaniae, the childish population was split into two hostile camps which stoned each other. On certain holidays the fathers and big brothers joined the children; blood flowed, and there were deaths.
Men of instinct, like Augustin, continually go wrong in this way about their object and the means to employ. But their mistakes are only in appearance. A will stronger than their own leads them, by mysterious ways, whither they ought to go. This first book of Augustin's is lost, and we are unable to say whether there be any reason to regret it.
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.
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.
For, in fact, to whom had he been entrusted? Doubtless to some host of Patricius, a pagan like himself. Or did he lodge with his master, a grammarian, who kept a boarding-house for the boys? Almost all these schoolmasters were pagan too. Is it wonderful that the Christian lessons of Monnica and the nurses at Thagaste became more and more blurred in Augustin's mind?
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.
Some of Augustin's companions were sons of wealthy citizens who gave splendid entertainments to their fellow-countrymen. As these dramatic representations, or games of the arena or circus, drew near, the little child-world was overcome by a fever of imitation.
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.
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.
But no doubt there were a good many exceptions. Besides, there is nothing in Augustin's reminiscences which authorizes us to believe that his father ever knew embarrassment, to say nothing of actual poverty. What seems by far the most probable is that he lived as well as he could upon the income of his estate as a small country landowner. In Africa people are satisfied with very little.
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