The Confessions of X by Suzanne M. Wolfe

Author:Suzanne M. Wolfe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

In my simplicity and ignorance of how the world works, I thought that when Augustine spoke of Rome it was a fact accomplished, for I could not imagine him wanting something and it not straightway being given him. But after he began applying for teaching posts in Italy and wrote endless letters to would-be patrons who might sponsor his career, stand friend to him at the imperial court in Milan, months dragged by and soon it was more than a year since we had stood that night on the terrace.

Augustine was increasingly discontented with his position as rhetor in Carthage. He often told me hair-raising tales of what his students got up to in the classroom, their rudeness, their drunken pranks—once they put a dead puppy in his scroll case—their cruel bullying of the younger students, fourteen-year-old boys away from home for the first time and easy prey.

“The jokes I can put up with,” he told me one night as we were having dinner. “Even their immense ignorance. But the worst is they change tutors behind my back to avoid paying my fees, these so-called sons of noblemen who have no respect for anything except their own pleasures.”

He looked at me despairingly across the table, and for the first time I noticed dark circles under his eyes put there by the burdens he carried, how to clothe and feed us, his guilt over the poorness of our lodgings but most of all, his monumental boredom in his job, a torture for one so intelligent, so quick to apprehend the world. And deeper than mere boredom, a restlessness of spirit that drove him ever to seek that which was just beyond reach and, when he grasped it at last, to discover that it was not what he wanted after all. Sometimes, in the darkest part of the night when I could not sleep, a voice whispered that one day he would find that I was not what he had wanted after all and he would seek another.

“Unless he is rich and can do as he likes,” he said, “a man is like a mule harnessed to a heavy load and beaten up the road. He longs for freedom, to be forever free of the whip that drives him, the taste of the iron bit in his mouth, the blinders over his eyes so he can only see the path laid out before him.” He gave a small smile. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am more than usually self-pitying tonight.”

I touched his hand. “Mule is right,” I said. “But that is a good thing: you are more than stubborn enough to find a way.”

He laughed as I had intended he should and we spoke of other things. But I did not forget his restlessness and prayed that he would find what he was searching for and soon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.