ooks, whom she entreated to converse with me and to refute
my errors. He answered that I was as yet unteachable, being puffed up
with the novelty of that heresy. "But let him alone awhile," saith he;
"only pray to God for him, he will of himself, by reading, find what
that error is, and how great its impiety." He told her how he himself,
when a little one, had by his mother been consigned over to the
Manichaeans, but had found out how much that sect was to be abhorred, and
had, therefore, avoided it. But he assured her that the child of such
tears as hers could not perish. Which answer she took as an oracle from
heaven.

Thus, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-eighth we lived, hunting
after popular applause and poetic prizes, and secretly following a false
religion. In those years I taught rhetoric, and in those years I had
conversation with one--not in that which is called lawful marriage--yet
with but one, remaining faithful even unto her. Those impostors whom
they style astrologers I consulted without scruple. In those years, when
I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my
friend, only too dear to me from a community of studies and pursuits, of
my own age, and, as myself, in the first bloom of youth. I had perverted
him also to those superstitions and pernicious fables for which my
mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be
happy without him But behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy
fugitives, at once "God of Vengeance" and Fountain of Mercies, turning
us to Thyself by wonderful means. Thou tookest that man out of this
life, when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship,
sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life. For long, sore sick of
a fever, he lay senseless in a death-sweat; so that, his recovery being
despaired of, he was baptised in that condition. He was relieved and
restored, and I essayed to jest with him, expecting him to do the same,
at that baptism which he had received when in the swoon. But he shrank
from me as from an enemy, and forbade such language. A few days
afterwards he was happily taken from my folly, that with Thee he might
be preserved for my comfort. In my absence he was attacked again by the
fever, and so died. At this grief my heart was utterly darkened. My
native country was a torment, and my father's house a strange
unhappiness to me. At length I fled out of the country, for so my eyes
missed him less where