The Strolling Saint | Page 5

seems that in what next she did there was more of
duty, more of penitence, more of reparation for the sin of having been a
woman as God made her, than of love. Indeed, I almost know this to be
so. In delicate health as she was, she bade her people prepare a litter for
her, and so she had herself carried into Piacenza, to the Church of St.
Augustine. There, having confessed and received the Sacrament, upon
her knees before a minor altar consecrated to St. Monica, she made
solemn vow that if my father's life was spared she would devote the
unborn child she carried to the service of God and Holy Church.
Two months thereafter word was brought her that my father, his
recovery by now well-nigh complete, was making his way home.
On the morrow was I born--a votive offering, an oblate, ere yet I had
drawn the breath of life.
It has oft diverted me to conjecture what would have chanced had I
been born a girl--since that could have afforded her no proper parallel.
In the circumstance that I was a boy, I have no faintest doubt but that
she saw a Sign, for she was given to seeing signs in the slightest and
most natural happenings. It was as it should be; it was as it had been
with the Sainted Monica in whose ways she strove, poor thing, to walk.
Monica had borne a son, and he had been named Augustine. It was very
well. My name, too, should be Augustine, that I might walk in the ways

of that other Augustine, that great theologian whose mother's name was
Monica.
And even as the influence of her name had been my mother's guide, so
was the influence of my name to exert its sway upon me. It was made
to do so. Ere I could read for myself, the life of that great saint--with
such castrations as my tender years demanded--was told me and
repeated until I knew by heart its every incident and act. Anon his
writings were my school-books. His De Civitate Dei and De Vita Beata
were the paps at which I suckled my earliest mental nourishment.
And even to-day, after all the tragedy and sin and turbulence of my life,
that was intended to have been so different, it is from his Confessions
that I have gathered inspiration to set down my own--although betwixt
the two you may discern little indeed that is comparable.
I was prenatally made a votive offering for the preservation of my
father's life, for his restoration to my mother safe and sound. That
restoration she had, as you have seen; and yet, had she been other than
she was, she must have accounted herself cheated of her bargain in the
end. For betwixt my father and my mother I became from my earliest
years a subject of contentions that drove them far asunder and set them
almost in enmity the one against the other.
I was his only son, heir to the noble lordships of Mondolfo and
Carmina. Was it likely, then, that he should sacrifice me willingly to
the seclusion of the cloister, whilst our lordship passed into the hands
of our renegade, guelphic cousin, Cosimo d'Anguissola of Codogno?
I can picture his outbursts at the very thought of it; I can hear him
reasoning, upbraiding, storming. But he was as an ocean of energy
hurling himself against the impassive rock of my mother's pietistic
obstinacy. She had vowed me to the service of Holy Church, and she
would suffer tribulation and death so that her vow should be fulfilled.
And hers was a manner against which that strong man, my father, never
could prevail. She would stand before him white-faced and mute, never
presuming to return an answer to his pleading or to enter into argument.

"I have vowed," she would say, just once; and thereafter, avoiding his
fiery glance, she would bow her head meekly, fold her hands, the very
incarnation of long-suffering and martyrdom.
Anon, as the storm of his anger crashed about her, two glistening lines
would appear upon her pallid face, and her tears--horrid, silent weeping
that brought no trace of emotion to her countenance--showered down.
At that he would fling out of her presence and away, cursing the day in
which he had mated with a fool.
His hatred of these moods of hers, of the vow she had made which bade
fair to deprive him of his son, drove him ere long to hatred of the cause
of it all. A ghibelline by inheritance, he was not long in becoming an
utter infidel, at war with Rome and the Pontifical sway. Nor was he one
to content himself with passive enmity. He must be up and doing,