ed, I almost know this to be so. In
delicate health as she was, she bade her people prepare a litter for
her, and so she had herself carried into Piacenza, to the Church of St.
Augustine. There, having confessed and received the Sacrament, upon her
knees before a minor altar consecrated to St. Monica, she made solemn
vow that if my father's life was spared she would devote the unborn
child she carried to the service of God and Holy Church.

Two months thereafter word was brought her that my father, his recovery
by now well-nigh complete, was making his way home.

On the morrow was I born--a votive offering, an oblate, ere yet I had
drawn the breath of life.

It has oft diverted me to conjecture what would have chanced had I been
born a girl--since that could have afforded her no proper parallel. In
the circumstance that I was a boy, I have no faintest doubt but that she
saw a Sign, for she was given to seeing signs in the slightest and most
natural happenings. It was as it should be; it was as it had been with
the Sainted Monica in whose ways she strove, poor thing, to walk. Monica
had borne a son, and he had been named Augustine. It was very well. My
name, too, should be Augustine, that I might walk in the ways of that
other Augustine, that great theologian whose mother's name was Monica.

And even as the influence of her name had been my mother's guide, so was
the influence of my name to exert its sway upon me. It was made to do
so. Ere I could read for myself, the life of that great saint--with such
castrations as my tender years demanded--was told me and repeated until
I knew by heart its every incident and act. Anon his writings were my
school-books. His De Civitate Dei and De Vita Beata were the paps at
which I suckled my earliest mental nourishment.

And even to-day, after all the tragedy and sin and turbulence of my
life, that was intended to have been so different, it is from
his Confessions that I have gathered inspiration to set down my
own--although betwixt the two you may discern little indeed that is
comparable.

I was prenatally made a votive offering for the preservation of my
father's life, for his restoration to my mother safe and sound. That
restoration she had, as you have seen; and yet, had she been other than
she was, she must have accounted herself cheated of her bargain in the
end. For betwixt my father and my mother I became from my earliest years
a subject of contentions that drove them f