Chapter V: Part 5

What meant that pale face and wasted figure? that flower of your age withering before its time, those heavy eyes, ever bathed in tears, your mind in a state of agitation, your broken rest and troubled moans, even when you were asleep? Why was your voice weak and altered through your sorrow of heart, and the very sound of your words, indistinct and broken, with whatever other token can be imagined, of a heart distressed and in disorder? Do you call these the signs of one in good health? Was it not this lady with whom for you every day, whether feast or fast, began and ended? Was it not at her coming the sun shone forth, and when she left you, night returned? Every change of her countenance brought a change in your heart; and if she were sad, you forthwith were filled with sadness. In a word, your life became wholly dependent upon hers. You know that I say but what is true and what is in every one's mouth.

And what could be more senseless than that, not content with the presence of her living face, the cause of all your woes, you must needs obtain a painted picture by an artist[16] of high repute, that you might carry it everywhere with you, to have an everlasting spring of tears, fearing, I suppose, lest otherwise their fountain might dry up? Of all such things you were only too vigilant, and you neglected everything else. But to come to that which is the very crowning instance of your folly, and of which I gave you warning a little while ago, who could sufficiently utter his indignation and amazement at this sign of a distempered mind, that, infatuated as much by the beauty of her name as of her person, you have with perfectly incredible silliness paid honour to anything that has the remotest connection with that name itself? Had you any liking for the laurel of empire or of poetry, it was forsooth because the name they bore was hers; and from this time onwards there is hardly a verse from your pen but in it you have made mention of the laurel, as if indeed you were a denizen of Peneus' stream,[17] or some priest on Cirrha's[18] Mount.

And finally, discovering that the laurel of empire was beyond your reach, you have, with as little self-restraint as you showed in the case of your beloved herself, now coveted the laurel of Poetry of which the merit of your works seemed to give more promise.

Although to gain your reward you were borne up on the wings of genius, yet will you shudder to remember with what trouble you attained it. I clearly divine what excuse you will make, and I see your thought the moment you open your lips. You will allege that you were devoted to these studies some time before you became a lover at all, and that desire for the glory of the poet's crown had kindled your heart from childhood. I neither deny it or forget it; but the fact of the usage being obsolete for centuries, and this being an epoch very unfavourable for studies like yours, the dangers also of long voyages, which would have brought you to the threshold of prison and of death itself, not to mention other obstacles of fortune no less violent than those--all these difficulties, I say, would perhaps have broken your resolve entirely, if the remembrance of a name so sweet, always entwining itself with your inmost soul, had not banished every other care, and drawn you over sea, over land, across mountains of difficulty, to Rome and to Naples, where at length you attained what you had longed for with such ardour. If all this seems to you the token of but a moderate passion, then at least shall be quite certain you are the victim of the moderate delusion.

I purposely leave out what Cicero was not ashamed to imitate from Terence when he wrote, "Wrongs, suspicions, fierce quarrels, jealousies, war, and then again peace--behold the miseries of love." Do you not recognise at once in his words the madness and, above all, the madness of jealousy which, as one knows too well, is the ruling power in love as love is the ruling passion among all others? Perhaps you may reply: "I admit it is so, but reason will be there to temper such excess." Terence himself had anticipated your answer when he added--

"Such fickle things to settle by sane rule
Is to be sanely insane."[19]

The phrase, the truth of which you will scarcely question, puts an end, unless I am mistaken, to all those subterfuges of yours.

Such, then, are the miseries of love, the particulars of which it is needless to mention to those who have proved them, and which would not be believed by those who never tried. But the worst of them all, to come back to our subject, is that it engenders a forgetfulness of God and of man's real state. For how should the soul thus crushed beneath these weights ever arise to that one and only most pure fountain of true Good? And since it is so, you may lay aside your wonder that Cicero should tell us no passion of man's soul seemed to him more violent than love.

_Petrarch_. I must own myself beaten; for it appears all you have said is taken from the very heart of the book of experience. And as you have quoted from the play of Terence, let me please myself by bringing from there also this sad complaint--

"O deed of shame! now am I foil of woe.
Weary I burn with love; with open eyes,
Brain clear, I am undone; and what to do
I know not."[20]

I would also call to mind this counsel from the same poet's words--

"Think, while there's time, again and yet again."[21]

_S. Augustine._ And I likewise from the lips of Terence will give you my reply--

"What in itself contains no rule or reason,
By rule or reason you can never hold."[22]

_Petrarch._ What is to be done, then? Am I to despair?

_S. Augustine._ That is the last thing in the world to do. However, let me briefly tell you the remedy I propose. You know that on this subject there are not only special treatises compiled by philosophers of eminence, but that some of the most famous poets have written on it whole books.

It would be almost an insult to point out which they are, above all, to you who are a past-master in the whole field, or to offer any advice as to reading them; but perhaps I might say a word without offence to suggest in what way their study might be applied for your own welfare.

First, then, notice what is said by Cicero--

"Some think that an old love can best be driven out by
a new, as one nail is by another."[23]

And Ovid agrees, giving this general rule--

"Old love affairs must always yield to new."[24]

And without a doubt it is the truth, for the mind thus divided and parcelled out between different objects feels itself moved with less force towards each one. So the river Ganges, they tell us, was divided up by the Persian king into countless channels, and this river, that was so deep and formidable, was cut up into a thousand inconsiderable streamlets. And so an army, broken up and scattered, becomes vulnerable by the enemy; so Fire dispersed dies down; in a word, every power in the world, if concentrated, increases, but by dispersion is reduced. On the other hand, I think this is not to be overlooked, that there may be great danger when you lay aside a passion and, if one may say so, a passion of the nobler kind; you may, if you are not watchful, fall into dissipation of another sort, run after women and become a loose libertine. In my judgment, then, if one must die for certain, there is some consolation in dying of a nobler rather than a less noble wound. So if you ask my advice, it is this: Take your courage in both hands. Fly, if you possibly can; and I would even say, go from one prison to another; perchance you might escape by the way or else find a milder discipline to be under. Only beware, when your neck is freed from one such yoke as this, that you place it not under the weight of a crowd of more base and vile oppressions.

_S. Petrarch._ While the doctor is finishing his advice, will he allow the patient, in the throes of his malady, to interrupt him for a minute?

_Augustine._ Of course. Why not? Many a doctor, guided by the symptoms of his patient thus declared, has been able to find the very remedy he needed.

_Petrarch._ Then what I want to say is just this: For me to love another is impossible. My mind has grown only to love her; my eyes to look only for her; excepting her, all to them is nothing, or is mere darkness. And so if your remedy is that in order to be healed of this love I should love another, your condition is an impossible one. In that case all is over, and I am lost.

_S. Augustine._ Your senses are dulled, your appetite is lost; since then you can take no internal remedy, one must have recourse to other treatment and see what can be done by change of scene. Can you bring your mind to think of flight or exile and going right away from the places that you know?

_Petrarch_. Though I feel that her attraction draws me to her with hooks of steel, nevertheless if I have to go, I can.

_S. Augustine_. If you can, you will be safe. What else can I say, then, but this advice of Virgil's, changing only two little words--

"Ah! flee this land beloved, and leave behind
shore to thee so dear."[25]

For how can you continue in safety in these scenes where there are so many memories of your wounds, where things present and the memory of things past cling always to you? So that I say, as Cicero also advises, "Seek change of scene; take care to do as one does who is recovering from some illness."[26]

_Petrarch_. Think of what you are prescribing. For how often and often, longing to get well, and familiar with advice like this, have I tried this remedy of flight; and though I have feigned various other reasons for it, yet the end and aim of all my peregrinations and all my retirement to the country was this one thing--to become free! For that I have wandered far away to the West, to the North, to the very confines of the ocean. Far and wide have I roamed. You see what good it has done me. And so Virgil's simile has many a time come home to my heart,--

"E'en as the stricken deer, that unaware
Rooming afar in pleasant groves of Crete,
The hunter pierces with his weapon keen.
And she unknowing o'er Mount Dicte's side
Flees wounded, and the fatal arrow cleaves
To her poor side."[27]

I am even as that deer. I have fled, but I bear everywhere my wound with me.

_S. Augustine._ Yourself have given me the answer for which you look.

_Petrarch._ How so?

_S. Augustine_. Why, do you not see that if a man bears his wound with him, change of scone is but an aggravation of his pain and not a means of healing it? One might say your case is just that of the young man who complained to Socrates that he had been a tour and it had done him no good whatever. "You went touring with yourself,"[28] said the Sage.

You must first break off the old load of your passions; you must make your soul ready. _Then_ you must fly. For it is proved to demonstration, not only in things physical but in moral also, that unless the patient is well disposed, the doctor's help is in vain. Otherwise were you to go to the far-off Indies, you will find that Horace only spoke truth when he said--

"Who cross the ocean making peace their goal,
Change but their sky and cannot change their soul."

Or thus--

"We come to this; when o'er the world we range,
'Tis but our climate, not our mind, we change."[29]

_Petrarch_. I must say I cannot follow you. You give me a prescription to cure and heal my soul and tell me I must first heal it and then flee. Now, my difficulty is I do not know how to heal it. If it is cured, what more do I need? But if, again, it is not cured, what good will change of scene bring me? The help you offer me is useless. Tell me briefly what are the remedies I must use?

_S. Augustine._ I did not say that you must cure and heal your soul. What I said was you must make it ready. As for the rest, either you will be cured, and the change of scene will then establish your health on a firm footing; or you will not yet be cured, but only made ready, and then the change of scene will have the same ultimate result. But, if your soul is neither cured nor made ready, this change and frequent moving from place to place will only stir up its grief. I will still advise you to take a leaf out of Horace's book--

"For if the cure of mental ills is due
To sense and wisdom, not a fine sea view,"[30]

--what he says is true. You will set out full of the hope and the wish to return, carrying along with you all that has ensnared your soul. In whatever place you are, to whatever side you turn, you will behold the face, you will hear the voice of her whom you have left. By that sad enchantment that belongs to lovers, you will have power to see her though you are absent, and to hear her though she is far away; and do you imagine that love is to be extinguished by subterfuges like this? Believe me, it will rather burn more fiercely. Those who call themselves masters in the art of love enjoin among their other maxims short absences one from another on the part of lovers, for fear they should become tired of seeing each other face to face or from their importunity. Therefore I advise, I recommend, I enjoin upon you that you learn to wholly sever your soul from that which weighs it down and go away without hope of return. You will discover then, but not before, what absence is able to do for the soul's healing. If fate had placed your lot in some unhealthy plague-stricken region where you were liable to constant illness, should you not flee from it never to return? And so I counsel you to do now, unless, as I much fear, men care more for their body than their soul.

_Petrarch_. That is their affair. But undoubtedly if I found myself ill on account of the unhealthiness of the place I was in, I should choose for my recovery some place with a healthier climate, and I should act in the same way, and with stronger reasons still, in case of maladies of the soul. Yet, as far as I can see, the cure of these is a more difficult matter.

_S. Augustine_. The united testimony of the greatest philosophers proves the falsity of that assertion. It is evident that all the maladies of the soul can be healed if only the patient puts no obstacle in the way, although many diseases of the body are incurable by any known means. For the rest, and not to go too far from our subject, I stick to my judgment. You must, as I said, make your soul ready, and teach it to renounce the object of its love, never once to turn back, never to see that which it was wont to look for. This is the only sure road for a lover; and if you wish to preserve your soul from ruin, this is what you must do.

_Petrarch._ That you may see how perfectly I have learned all you have said, let me recapitulate that to go for change of scene is useless, unless the soul is first made ready; such journeys will cure it when made ready, and will establish it when once cured. Is not that the conclusion of your threefold precept?

_S. Augustine._ Yes, it is precisely that, and you sum up very well what I have unfolded.

_Petrarch._ I could have divined your two first truths by myself, without you pointing them out; but as for the third, that the soul, when it is cured and established in health, still needs absence, I do not understand it, unless it is the fear of a relapse that is the motive of what you say.

_S. Augustine._ But you surely do not suppose that to be a slight point even in bodily health? And how much more grave a matter ought one to think it in regard to the soul, where a relapse is so much more rapid and dangerous. So I would say, let us refer once more to what seems one of the soundest remarks of Seneca, where in a letter he writes, "If any man wishes to have done with love he must avoid all recollection of the beloved form," and adds as his reason, "For nothing is so easily rekindled to life again as love."[31] O how true a saying is that, and from what profound experience of life is he speaking! But it is needless to call any other witness of this than your own knowledge will supply.

_Petrarch._ Yes, I agree he speaks truth, but if you notice he is speaking not of one who already has done with love, but of one who wishes to have done with it.

_S. Augustine_. He speaks of any man who is in danger. Any kind of blow is more dangerous if there is some wound before unhealed, or some disease not yet cured; and even afterwards it is not safe. And since we remember most, instances that have come home to us in our own experience, let me ask how often have you who speak to me not found yourself, as you went about these well-known spots, by their mere look, though no person met you, reminded of your former vanities; standing speechless, full of sighs, as you pace this town that has been, I will not say the cause, but at any rate the scene of all your evils; though before you came back to it you thought you were cured, and would have been to a very great extent if only you had remained away? And then with difficulty restraining your tears, half-wounded to death, you have fled, and cried to your own heart, "Here in these places I see at every turn the ambush of my ancient foe. The signs of death are ever about me!" So, then, were you healed already, if you would take counsel of me, I should say, "Do not stay long in this place. It is not wise for the prisoner who has broken his chains to go wandering round the prison gates, ever ready to take him in again, before which the jailer is ever on guard, laying his traps with special care to recapture those whose escape he regrets.

"The downward path to hell is ever smooth,
Its dismal gate is open night and day."[32]

If precautions like these are needful for men in health, how much more are they in the case of those who have not yet shaken off their sickness. It is of the latter that Seneca was thinking when he wrote that maxim. He was giving counsel to those who were most in danger, for it was no use to speak of those whom the flame had already devoured and who were past all care for their safety. He addressed himself to those in another stage, who still felt the heat but tried to come forth of the flame. Many a sick man on the way to recovery has been thrown back by a draught of water which before his illness would have done him no harm; and often has one wearied out, with a long day's work, been knocked down by some trifling shake which when he was in his full strength would not have moved him at all.

It needs but a trifle sometimes, when the soul is emerging from its miseries, to plunge it quite back once more into the abyss. To see the purple on the shoulders of another will rouse again all our sleeping ambition; the sight of a little pile of money sets up our thirst for gold; one look at some fair lady will stir again our desire; the light glance of an eye will awaken sleeping love.

It is no wonder plagues like these take possession of your minds, when you see the madness of the world; and when once they have found their way back to the soul, they come with fatal ease. And since it is so, it is not enough merely to leave a plague-stricken spot, but you, O man, must keep on in your flight for life, till you have escaped everything that might drag the soul back to its old passions; for fear lest, when you return from the pit with Orpheus and look back, you lose your Eurydice once more.

Such is the sum of my counsel.

_Petrarch_. I accept it heartily and with thankfulness, for I feel that the remedy is suited to my wound. My intention is to fly, but I know not yet where lies the direction I should choose.

_S. Augustine._ A thousand ways are open to you to make choice of on every side; a thousand ports are ready to receive you. I know that, more than to other lands, your heart turns to Italy, and that a love of your native soil is inborn in you; and you are right, for--

"Not Media's forests rich, nor Ganges' stream,
Though fair it be, nor Hermus rolling gold,
May vie with Italy; Bactria and Ind,
And all Pachaia with its odours rare
Shall not be mentioned."[33]

I think you have yourself not long ago, in a letter to one of your friends,[34] treated this theme of the famous Poet at fuller length in a Latin poem. Italy then would be my choice for you; because the ways of its people, its climate, the sea washing its shores, the Apennine range coming between them, all promise that a sojourn there would be better suited to extirpate your troubles than going anywhere else in the world. I would not, however, wish to confine you only to one corner of the land. Go under good auspices wherever inclination may lead; go without fear and with a free mind; take no backward glances, forget the past and step forward to the future. See how long you have been a stranger to your own country and your own self. It is time to return, for--

"O now 'tis evening, and the night
Is chiefly friend to thieves."[35]

I warn you in words of your own.

One further counsel I must urge which I had nearly forgotten. You must avoid solitude, until you are quite sure that you have not a trace of your old ailment left. You told me that a country life had done you no good. There is nothing surprising in that. What remedy were you likely to find in a place all lonely and remote? Let me confess that often when you were retreating thither all by yourself, sighing, and turning longing eyes back to the town, I have laughed heartily and said to myself: "What a blindfold fool love has made of this unhappy wight! and led him to quite forget the verse that every schoolboy knows, about flying from his trouble and finding his death."

_Petrarch_. I am afraid you are right, but what are the lines to which you allude?

_S. Augustine._ Ovid, of course.

"Lover! whoe'er you be, dwell not alone;
In solitude you're sure to be undone.
You're safer in a crowd; the word is true,
Lone woods are not the place for such as you."[36]

_Petrarch_. Yes, I remember them perfectly, and knew them almost by heart from my childhood.

_S. Augustine._ Much good has it done you to know so many things yet not know how to suit them to your need. When you not only know all the testimony of the ancients, but have yourself proved the evils of solitude, it astonishes me that you should commit such a blunder as to seek it. You have, in fact, often complained that there was no good in being alone. You have expressed it in a thousand places, and especially in the fine poem you composed on your own misfortune. The sweet accents of it charmed me while you were writing.[37]

It surprised me to hear a song so harmonious arise from a soul so full of agitation, and come from the lips of a man so far out of his senses and I asked myself what power of love can stay the offended Muses from abandoning so dire a nest of troubles, and, scared by such aberration of mind in their host, forsaking utterly their wonted dwelling? I thought of words of Plato, "Let no man wholly sane knock at Poe try'd door," and then of Aristotle, who followed him and said, "All great genius has a touch of madness in it,"[38] but I remembered that in these sayings of theirs they were thinking of a frenzy far indeed removed from yours. However, we will return to this subject at some other time.

_Petrarch_. I must fain own what you say is the truth; but I never thought to have made verses so harmonious as to be worth your praise and commendation. They will be all the dearer to me now that I know it.

If you have other remedy to offer me, I beg you withhold it not from him who is in need.

_S. Augustine_. To unfold all one knows is the act of a braggart more than of a wise friend. And remember that men did not invent all the sundry kinds of remedies, internal and external, for diverse kinds of sickness, on purpose that each and every one should be tried on every occasion; but that, as Seneca remarks to Lucilius, "Nothing is so contrary to the work of healing as a frequent change of remedy; and no wound will ever be healed perfectly, to which first one and then another medicine is continually applied. The true way is only to try the new when the old remedy has failed."[39]

So, then, although the remedies for this kind of ailment are many and varied, I will content myself with only pointing out a few, and I will choose those which in my judgment will best suit your need. For indeed, I have no wish merely to show you what is new, but only to tell you, of all those which are known, what remedies, so far as I can judge, are most likely in your case to be efficacious.

There are three things, as Cicero says, that will avert the mind of man from Love,--Satiety, Shamefastness, Reflection.[40]

There may indeed be more; there may be less. But, to follow the steps of so great an authority, let us suppose there are three. It will be useless for me to speak of the first in your case, because you will judge it is impossible you should ever come to satiety of your love. But still if your passion will hear the voice of reason and judge the future from the past, you will readily agree that an object, even the most beloved, can produce, I do not say satiety only, but even weariness and disgust. Now, as I am quite sure I should be entering on a vain quest if I embark on this track, because, even if it were granted that satiety is a possible thing, and that it kills love, you will pretend that by the ardour of your passion you are a thousand leagues removed from any such possibility, and, as I am not at all disposed to deny it, what remains is for me to touch only upon the other two remedies that are left. You will not wish to dispute my assertion that Nature has endowed you with a certain power of reason, and also with some talent for forming a weighty judgment.

_Petrarch._ Unless I am deceived by acting as judge in my own cause, what you say is so true that I am often inclined to fear I am too wanting in what is due both to my sex and this age; wherein, as you doubtless observe, everything goes to the shameless. Honours, prosperity, wealth--all these hold the field; and to these, virtue itself, nay even fortune, must give way.[41]

_S. Augustine._ Do you not see what conflict there is between Love and Shamefastness? While the one urges the soul forward, the other holds it back; the one drives in the spur, the other pulls hard at the bridle; the one looks at nothing, the other watches carefully on every side.

_Petrarch_. This is only too familiar to me, and I feel to my cost how distracted is my life by passions so contrary. They come upon me by turn, so that my poor spirit, tossed hither and thither, knows not which impulse to obey.

_S. Augustine._ Do you mind telling me if you have looked in your glass lately?

_Petrarch._ And, pray, what do you ask that question for? I have only done as usual.

_S. Augustine._ Heaven grant you do it no oftener, neither with more self-complacency, than you should! Well, and have you not noticed that your face is changing from day to day, and that from time to time grey hairs begin to show themselves around your temples?

_Petrarch._ Is that all? I thought you were about to ask me something out of the common; but to grow up, to grow old, to die is the common lot of all that are born. I have observed what befalls almost all my contemporaries; for nowadays men seem to age more quickly than they used to, though I know not why or wherefore.

_S. Augustine._ The growing old of others will not give you back your youth, neither will their dying bring you immortality. So let us leave on one side everything else and return to your own case. Tell me; when you have noticed these signs of change in your body, has it not brought some change also in your soul?

_Petrarch._ It has certainly made some impression on me, but not exactly a change.

_S. Augustine._ What, then, were your thoughts, and what did you say to yourself?

_Petrarch._ What would you have me say, except what was said by Domitian the Emperor, "With even mind I brook the sight of watching, though still young, my hairs grow grey."[42] So illustrious an example has consoled me for what grey hairs I too behold. And if I needed more, I brought to mind a king beside that emperor; I mean Numa Pompilius the Second, who, as the historian relates, had grey hair even from his youth. And Poetry as well as History comes to my aid, since in his Bucolics our own Virgil, writing when he was but five-and-twenty, speaking of himself in the person of a shepherd, exclaims--

"When now my whitening beard the razor knew."[43]

_S. Augustine._ What vast abundance of examples you can command! Pray heaven you have as many recollections of your own death. For I praise not those exemplars that lead one to dissemble grey hairs which are the heralds of old age, and the _avant-couriers_ of Death. And good those examples are not, if their effect is to take you off the trouble of remembering how time flies, and to lead you to forget your own last hour; to the recollection of which the whole of my discourse is entirely and without ceasing directed. When I bid you think on your own whitening forehead, do you quote me a crowd of famous men whose locks were white also? What does it prove? Ah, if you were able to say these were immortal, then you might from their example put away the dread of your changing brow. If instead of mentioning greyness I had ventured to hint that you were getting bald, you would, I suppose, have thrown Julius Cæsar in my teeth!

_Petrarch_. Certainly. What more illustrious example could I need? Now, unless I am mistaken, it is in fact a great comfort to find oneself surrounded by companions so famous. Yes, I will freely admit that I am not disposed for a moment to reject such examples, which are, for me, part of the luggage I carry daily in my mind; for it is a pleasure to me not only in such misfortunes as Nature or chance have already allotted me, but also in those which they may still have in store; it is a pleasure, I say, to have ever at hand such matter of comfort and consolation as I can obtain only from some truly cogent reason or outstanding example.

If, then, you meant to reproach me for being afraid of thunder--a charge I could not deny (and one of the chief reasons why I love the laurel is because it is said that thunder will not strike this tree), then I shall reply to you that this was a weakness Cæsar Augustus shared; if you allege that I am getting blind (and there also you would be right), I should quote you Appius Cæcus and also Homer, the Prince of Poets; if you call me one-eyed, I will, shield myself behind Hannibal, the Punic leader, or Philip, King of Macedon; call me deaf, and Marcus Crassus shall be my defence; say I cannot stand the heat, and I will say I am but like Alexander, Prince of Macedonia.

It were tedious to go through all the list; but after these you can judge who they would be.

_S. Augustine._ Yes, perfectly. I am nowise displeased with your wealth of instances, provided it does not make you self-negligent and only serves to disperse the clouds of fear and sadness. I applaud anything that helps a man to face with courage the coming of old age, and keeps him from bewailing its presence when it has arrived. But I loathe and abominate profoundly everything that conceals from him the truth that old age is the port of departure from this life, and blinds him to the need of reflecting on death. To take with equanimity the going grey before one's time is the sign of a good natural disposition; but to try and interpose artificial checks, to cheat time of his years, to raise an outcry and declare grey hairs are come too soon, to begin dyeing or plucking them out, is a piece of folly, which, common as it may be, is none the less egregious for all that.

You perceive not, O blind that you are, how swiftly the stars roll in their course, and how soon the flight of time consumes the space of your short life, and you marvel when you see old age coming on, hastening quickly the despatch of all your days.

Two causes seem to foster this delusion. The first is that even the shortest life is partitioned out by some people into four, by others into six, and by others again into a still larger number of periods; that is to say, the reality is so small, and as you cannot make it longer, you think you will enlarge it by division. But of what profit tis all this dividing? Make as many particles as you like, and they are all gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

"Yesterday was born the baby,
See to-day the lovely boy,
Then the young man quick as may be,
Then an end of life and joy."

You observe with what quick hurrying words the subtle poet has sketched out the swift course of our life. So it is in vain you strive to lengthen out what Nature, the mother of us all, has made so short.

The second cause is that you will persist in letting old age find you still in the midst of games and empty pleasures; like the old Trojans who in their customary ways passed the last night without perceiving.

"The cunning, fatal horse, who bore within
Those armed bands, had overleapt the wall
Of Pergamos."[44]

Yes, even so you perceive not that old age, bringing in his train the armed warrior Death, unpitying and stem, has over-leapt the weakly-guarded rampart of your body; and then you find your foe has already glided by stealth along his rope--

"And now the invader climbs within the gate
And takes the city in its drunken sleep."[45]

For in the gross body and the pleasure of things temporal, not less drunk are you than those old Trojans were, as Virgil saw them, in their slumber and their wine.

Or, looking to another quarter, no less truth is to be found in the neat lines of the Satirist--

"Our lives unfold in morning air As lilies of a day, 'Come bring us wine,' we shout. 'Ho, there, Fetch garlands, odours, damsels fair.' But ah! before we are aware, Old Age sweeps all away."[46]

Now, to come back to our subject and to yourself, when this old age comes stealing on and knocks at your door, you make an effort to bar him out. You pretend that by some infraction of the order of Nature he has come too soon. You are delighted when you come across some rather elderly person who declares he knew you when you were a child, especially if, as people generally do, he makes out it was but yesterday or the day before. You find it convenient to forget that one can say as much about any old dotard however decrepit. Who was not a child yesterday, or to-day, as far as that goes?

We can look here and there and find infants of ninety quarrelling about trifles and even now occupied with infantine toys. The days flee away, the body decays, the soul is where it was. Though everything is rotten with age, the soul has never grown up, never come to maturity, and it is a truth, as the proverb says, "One soul uses up many bodies." Infancy passes, but, as Seneca remarks, "childishness remains."[47] And, believe me, perhaps you are not so young as you imagine, for the greater part of mankind have not yet reached the age which you have.

Blush, therefore, to pass for an aged lover; blush to be so long the Public's jest; and if true glory has no charm for you and ridicule no terror, at least let change of heart come to the rescue and save you from disgrace. For, if I see things at all truly, a man should guard his reputation, if only to spare his own friends the shameful necessity of telling lies. All the world owes this to itself, but especially such a man as yourself, who have so great a public to justify, and one which is always talking of you.

"Great is the task to guard a great man's name."[48]

If in your poem of _Africa_ you make a truculent enemy tender such good counsel to your beloved Scipio, you may well allow, for your own profit, a father, who loves you tenderly, to utter with his lips the very same monition.

Put away the childish things of infancy; quench the burning desires of youth; think not all the time of what you are going to be and do next; look carefully what you are now; do not imagine that the mirror has been put before your eyes for nothing, but remember that which is written in the Book of Questions on Nature:--

"Mirrors were invented that men might know themselves. Much profit comes thereby. First, knowledge of self; second, wise counsel. You are handsome, then beware of what disfigures: plain, then make up by virtue what is wanting in good looks. You are young, then remember youth's springtime is the time for study and for manly work: old, then lay aside the ugly vices off the flesh and turn your thoughts to what will be the latter end."[49]

_Petrarch_. It has dwelt in my remembrance always, from the first day that ever I read it; for the thing itself is worth remembering and its warning is wise.

_S. Augustine._ Of what profit has it been to you to read and remember? You had better excused yourself had you pleaded ignorance for your shield. Knowing what you do, are you not ashamed to see that your grey hairs have brought no change in you?

_Petrarch._ I am ashamed, I regret it, I repent of it, but as for doing more, I cannot. Moreover, you know I have this much of consolation, that she too is growing old with me.

_S. Augustine._ The very word of Julia, Cæsar Augustus' daughter! Doubtless it has lain fixed in your mind, has it not? When her father found fault because she would not have older people round her, as did Livia, she parried the paternal reproof by the neat rejoinder--"They will be older as soon as I am."[50]

But pray, tell me, do you suppose that at your age it will be more becoming to doat upon an old woman than to love a young one? On the contrary, it is the more unbecoming, as the reason for loving is less. Well may you take shame to yourself never to grow any wiser though you see your body daily growing older. That is all I can say on the subject of shame.

But, as Cicero tells us, it is but a poor thing to make shame do the work of reason; and so to reason, the true source of all remedies, let us now turn for help. You will assuredly find it through using deep Reflection--the third of the things that turn the soul away from love. Remember what you are now called to is that citadel wherein alone you can be quite safe against the incursions of passion and by which alone you will deserve the name of Man. Consider, then, first how noble a thing is the soul, and that so great is it that were I to discourse as I should wish, I must needs make a whole book thereon. Consider, again, the frailty and vileness of the body, which would demand no less full treatment than the other. Think also of the shortness of our life, concerning which many great men have left their books. Think of the flight of time, that no one yet has been able to express in words. Think of Death, the fact so certain, the hour so uncertain, but everywhere and at all times imminent. Think how men are deceived just in this one point, that they believe they can put off what in fact never can be put off: for no one is really such a fool as, supposing the question is asked him, not to answer that of course some day he will die. And so let not the hope of longer life mock you, as it mocks so many others, but rather lay up in your heart the verse that seems as it were an oracle of heaven--

"Count every day that dawns to be your last,"[51]

For is it not so that to mortal men every day is in truth the last, or all but the last? Consider, moreover, how shameful it is to have men point the finger at you, and to become a public laughing-stock; remember, too, how ill your profession accords with a life like this. Think how this woman has injured your soul, your body, your fortune. Remember what you have borne for her, all to no purpose: how many times you have been mocked, despised, scorned; think what flatteries, what lamentations, and of all the tears you have cast upon the wind; think how again and again she has heaped all this on you with an air of haughty disdain, and how if for a moment she showed herself more kind, it was but for the passing of a breath and then was gone.

Think, moreover, how much you have added to her fame, and of what she has subtracted from your life: how you have ever been jealous for her good name, but she has been always regardless of your very self and condition. Remember how she has turned you aside from loving God, and into how great miseries you have fallen, known to me, but which I pass in silence lest the birds of the air carry the matter abroad.

Think, moreover, what tasks on all sides are claiming your attention, and by which you may do far more good and deserve far more honour: how many things you have on hand, as yet uncompleted, to which it would be far better for you to return, and devote more time, instead of attempting them so perfunctorily as you have en doing lately.

Finally, ponder well what that thing is for which you have such consuming desire. But think like a man and with your wits about you; for fear lest while you are in the act of flying you be cunningly entangled, as not a few have been when Beauty's fascinating charm steals upon them by some little, unlooked-for channel, and then is fed and strengthened by evil remedies.

For how be there that have once tasted this seductive pleasure and can retain enough manliness, not to say courage, to rate at its true value that poor form of woman of which I speak. Only too easily Man's strength of mind gives way, and with nature pressing on, he falls soonest on that side to which he has long leaned. Take most earnest heed that this happen not to you. Banish every recollection of those old cares of yours: put far away from you every vision of the past, and, as one has said in a certain place, "dash the little children against the stones,"[52] lest if they grow up you yourself be cast into the mire. And defer not to knock at Heaven's door with prayers; let your supplications weary the ears of the heavenly King; day and night lift up your petition with tears and crying, if perchance the Almighty will take compassion upon you and give an end to your sore trouble and distress.

These are the things that you must do, these the safeguards you must employ; if you will observe them faithfully the Divine Help will be at hand, as I trust; and the right hand of the Deliverer whom none can resist will succour you.

But albeit I have spoken on this one malady what is too short for your needs but too long for the briefness of our time, let us pass now to another matter. One evil still is left, to heal you of which I now will make a last endeavour.

_Petrarch._ Even so do, most gentle Father. For though I be not yet wholly set free from my burdens, yet, nevertheless, from great part of them I do feel in truth a blessed release.

_S. Augustine._ Ambition still has too much hold on you. You seek too eagerly the praise of men, and to leave behind you an undying name.

_Petrarch._ I freely confess it. I cannot beat down that passion in my soul. For it, as yet, I have found no cure.

_S. Augustine_. But I greatly fear lest this pursuit of a false immortality of fame may shut for you the way that leads to the true immortality of life.

_Petrarch._ That is one of my fears also, but I await your discovering to me the means to save my life; you, of a truth, will do it, who have furnished me with means for the healing of evils greater still.

_S. Augustine_. Think not that any of your ills is greater than this one, though I deny not that some may be more vile.

But tell me, I pray you, what in your opinion is this thing called glory, that you so ardently covet?

_Petrarch._ I know not if you ask me for a definition. But if so, who so capable to give one as yourself?

_S. Augustine._ The name of glory is well enough known to you; but to the real thing, if one may judge by your actions, you are a stranger. If you had known what it is you would not long for it so eagerly. Suppose you define glory, with Cicero, as being "the illustrious and world-wide renown of good services rendered to one's fellow citizens, to one's country, or to all mankind"; or as he expresses it elsewhere, "Public opinion uttering its voice about a man in words of praise."[53] You will notice that in both these cases glory is said to be reputation. Now, do you know what this reputation is?

_Petrarch._ I cannot say any good description of it occurs to me at the moment; and I shrink from putting forward things I do not understand. I think, therefore, the truer and better course is for me to keep silence.

_S. Augustine_. You act like a wise and modest man. In every serious question, and especially when the matter is ambiguous, one should pay much less attention to what one will say than to what one will not say, for the credit of having said well is something much less than the discredit of having said ill. Now I submit to you that reputation is nothing but talk about some one, passing from mouth to mouth of many people.

_Petrarch._ I think your definition, or, if you prefer the word, your description, is a good one.

_S. Augustine_. It is, then, but a breath, a changing wind; and, what will disgust you more, it is the breath of a crowd. I know to whom I am speaking. I have observed that no man more than you abhors the manners and behaviour of the common herd. Now see what perversity is this! You let yourself be charmed with the applause of those whose conduct you abominate; and may Heaven grant you are only charmed, and that you put not in their power your own everlasting welfare! Why and wherefore, I ask, this perpetual toil, these ceaseless vigils, and this intense application to study? You will answer, perhaps, that you seek to find out what is profitable for life. But you have long since learned what is needful for life and for death.

What was now required of you was to try and put in practice what you know, instead of plunging deeper and deeper into laborious inquiries, where new problems are always meeting you, and insoluble mysteries, in which you never reach the end. Add to which the fact that you keep toiling and toiling to satisfy the public; wearying yourself to please the very people who, to you, are the most displeasing; gathering now a flower of poesy, now of history--in a word, employing all your genius of words to tickle the ears of the listening throng.

_Petrarch_. I beg your pardon, but I cannot let that pass without saying a word. Never since I was a boy have I pleased myself with elegant extracts and flowerets of literature. For often have I noted what neat and excellent things Cicero has uttered against butchers of books, and especially, also, the phrase of Seneca in which he declares, "It is a disgrace for a man to keep hunting for flowers and prop himself up on familiar quotations, and only stand on what he knows by heart."[54]