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She had carried Monnica's father on her back when he was little, just as the Kabylian women or the Bedouin nomads carry their babies still. She was a devoted slave, just a bit unreasonable a veritable housedog who in the zeal of guardianship barks more than is necessary at the stranger who passes.
His companions felt likewise. Evodius caught up a psalter, and before Monnica's body, not yet cold, he began to chant the Psalm, "My song shall be of mercy and judgment; unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." All who were in the house took up the responses. In the meantime, while the layers-out were preparing the corpse for burial, the brethren drew Augustin into another room.
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.
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." 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.
Nor did any one say he did. Other women who had less passionate husbands were nevertheless beaten by them. When they came to Monnica's house they shewed her the marks of the whacks they had got, their faces swollen from blows, and they burst out in abuse of men, clamouring against their lechery, which, said these matrons, was the cause of the ill-treatment they had to endure.
They strike fiercely, when a few words said at the right moment would have much more effect on the culprit.... Monnica's son suffered as much from the rod as he took pride in his successes at games. If, as Scipio, he was filled with a sensation of glory in his battles against other boys, no doubt he pictured himself a martyr, a St. Laurence or St. Sebastian, when he was swished.
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.
Almost a year went by before Augustin continued his journey. It is hard to account for this delay. Why should he thus put off his return to Africa, he who was so anxious to fly the world? It is likely that Monnica's illness, the arrangements about her funeral, and other matters to settle, kept him at Ostia till the beginning of winter. The weather became stormy, the sea dangerous.
And then, above all! he had to live; Monnica's remittances were necessarily small; the generosity of Romanianus had its limit. So he beat about to enlarge his small student's purse. He wrote verses for poetic competitions. Perhaps already he was able to act as tutor to certain of his fellow-students, less advanced.
They might have imagined that he had no sense of grief, "But in Thy hearing, O my God, where none of them could hear, I was chiding the softness of my heart, and holding back the tide of sorrow.... Alas! well did I know what I was choking down in my heart." Not even at the church, where the sacrifice was offered for Monnica's soul, nor at the cemetery before the coffin, did he weep.
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