eloquence as he preached to the people, though I took no pains to learn
what he taught, but only to hear how he spake.

My mother had now come to me. When I had discovered to her that I was
now no longer a Manichaean, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was
not overjoyed as at something unexpected. But she redoubled her prayers
and tears for me now that what she had begged of Thee daily with tears
was in so great part realised; and she hurried the more eagerly to the
church, and hung on the lips of Ambrose, whom she loved as "an angel of
God," because she knew that by him I had been brought to that wavering I
was now in. I heard him every Lord's Day expound the word of truth, and
was sure that all the knots of the Manichaeans could be unravelled. So I
was confounded and converted. Yet I panted after honours, gains,
marriage--and in these desires I underwent most bitter crosses.

One day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the Emperor
[probably the Emperor Valentinian the Younger], wherein I was to utter
many a lie, and, lying, was to be applauded by those who knew I lied,
while passing through the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar
joking and joyous. I sighed, and spoke to the friends around me of the
many sorrows of the phantoms we pursued--for by all our effort and toil
we yet looked to arrive only at the very joyousness whither that beggar
had arrived before us. I was racked with cares, but he, by saying "God
bless you!" had got some good wine; I, by talking lies, was hunting
after empty praise. Chiefly did I speak of such things with Alypius and
Bebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, and had
studied under me, and loved me. But the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits
had, when he lived there, drawn him into follies of the circus. One day
as I sat teaching my scholars, he entered and listened attentively,
while I by chance had in hand a passage which, while I was explaining,
suggested to me a simile from the circensian races, not without a jibe
at those who were enthralled by that folly. Alpius took it wholly to
himself, and he returned no more to the filths of the circensian
pastimes in Carthage. But he had gone before me to Rome, and there he
was carried away with an incredible eagerness after the shows of
gladiators. Him I found at Rome, and he clave to me and went with me to
Milan, that he might be with me, and also practise something of the law
that he had studied. Bebr