reason being that I heard that young men studied there more peacefully, and were kept under a more regular discipline.  My mother remained behind weeping and praying.  And, behold, at Rome I was received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was going down to hell, carrying all the sins that I had committed.  Thou healdest me of that sickness that I might live for Thee to bestow upon me a better and more abiding health.  I began then diligently to teach rhetoric in Rome when, lo!  I found other offences committed in that city, to which I had not been exposed in Africa, for, on a sudden, a number of youths plot together to avoid paying their master’s salary, and remove to another school.  When, therefore, they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of the city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, I made application that Symmachus, then prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject for oration, and so send me.  Thus to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, best known to the whole world as among the best of men, Thy servant.  To him I was unknowingly led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee.  That man of God received me as a father, and showed me an episcopal kindness at my coming.  Thenceforth I began to love him.  I was delighted with his 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.