find
with him, except his title?

_Fourchambault_--He's fast, a gambler, worn out by dissipation.

_Madame Fourchambault_--Blanche likes him just as he is.

_Fourchambault_--Heavens! He's not even handsome.

_Madame Fourchambault_--What does that matter? Haven't I been the
happiest of wives?

_Fourchambault_--What? One word is as good as a hundred. I won't have
him. Blanche need not take Chauvet, but she shan't marry Rastiboulois
either. That's all I have to say.

_Madame Fourchambault_--But, Monsieur--

_Fourchambault_--That's all I have to say.

[_He goes out._]

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

(354-430)

BY SAMUEL HART

St. Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus) was born at Tagaste in
Numidia, November 13th, 354. The story of his life has been told by
himself in that wonderful book addressed to God which he called the
'Confessions'. He gained but little from his father Patricius; he owed
almost everything to his loving and saintly mother Monica. Though she
was a Christian, she did not venture to bring her son to baptism; and he
went away from home with only the echo of the name of Jesus Christ in
his soul, as it had been spoken by his mother's lips. He fell deeply
into the sins of youth, but found no satisfaction in them, nor was he
satisfied by the studies of literature to which for a while he devoted
himself. The reading of Cicero's 'Hortensius' partly called him back to
himself; but before he was twenty years old he was carried away into
Manichaeism, a strange system of belief which united traces of Christian
teaching with Persian doctrines of two antagonistic principles,
practically two gods, a good god of the spiritual world and an evil god
of the material world. From this he passed after a while into less gross
forms of philosophical speculation, and presently began to lecture on
rhetoric at Tagaste and at Carthage. When nearly thirty years of age he
went to Rome, only to be disappointed in his hopes for glory as a
rhetorician; and after two years his mother joined him at Milan.

[Illustration: _ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS MOTHER_. Photogravure from a
Painting by Ary Scheffer.]

[Illustration]

The great Ambrose had been called from the magistrate's chair to be
bishop of this important city; and his character and ability made a
great impression on Augustine. But Augustine was kept from acknowledging
and submitting to the truth, not by the intellectual difficulties which
he propounded as an exc