" "And we delighted in doing ill, not
only for the pleasure of the fact, but even for the affection of prayse."
Even Monica, it seems, justified the saying:
"Every woman is at heart a Rake."
Marriage would have been his making, Saint Augustine says, "but she
desired not even that so very much, lest the cloggs of a wife might have
hindered her hopes of me . . . In the meantime the reins were loosed to
me beyond reason." Yet the sin which he regrets most bitterly was
nothing more dreadful than the robbery of an orchard! Pears he had in
plenty, none the less he went, with a band of roisterers, and pillaged
another man's pear tree. "I loved the sin, not that which I obtained by
the same, but I loved the sin itself." There lay the sting of it! They
were not even unusually excellent pears. "A Peare tree ther was, neere
our vineyard, heavy loaden with fruite, which tempted not greatly either
the sight or tast. To the shaking and robbing thereof, certaine most
wicked youthes (whereof I was one) went late at night. We carried away
huge burthens of fruit from thence, not for our owne eating, but to be
cast before the hoggs."
Oh, moonlit night of Africa, and orchard by these wild seabanks where
once Dido stood; oh, laughter of boys among the shaken leaves, and sound
of falling fruit; how do you live alone out of so many nights that no man
remembers? For Carthage is destroyed, indeed, and forsaken of the sea,
yet that one hour of summer is to be unforgotten while man has memory of
the story of his past.
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