Thus started, Augustin was not able to pull up half-way on the road of pleasure; he never did anything by halves. In these vulgar revels of the ordinary wild youth, he wanted again to be best, he wanted to be first as he was at school. He stirred up his companions and drew them after him. They in their turn drew him. Among them was found that Alypius, who was the friend of all his life, who shared his faults and mistakes, who followed him even in his conversion, and became Bishop of Thagaste. These two future shepherds of Christ roamed the streets with the lost sheep. They spent the nights in the open spaces of the town, playing, or wantonly dreaming before cups of cool drinks. They lounged there, stretched out on mats, with a crown of leaves on the head, a jasmine garland round the neck, a rose or marigold thrust above the ear. They never knew what to do next to kill time. So one fine evening the reckless crew took it into their heads to rifle a pear tree of one of Patricius's neighbours. This pear tree was just beyond the vineyard belonging to Augustin's father. The rascals shook down the pears. They took a few bites to find out the taste, and having decided this to be rather disappointing, they chucked all the rest to the hogs. In this theft, done merely for the pleasure of the thing, Augustin sees an evidence of diabolical mischief. Doubtless he committed many another misdeed where, like this, the whole attraction lay in the Satanic joy of breaking the law. His fury for dissolute courses knew no rest. Did Monnica observe anything of this change in Augustin? The boy, grown big, had escaped from the supervision of the women's apartments. If the mother guessed anything, she did not guess all. It fell to her husband to open her eyes. With the freedom of manners among the ancients, Augustin relates the fact quite plainly.... That took place in the bath-buildings at Thagaste. He was bathing with his father, probably in the _piscina_ of cold baths. The bathers who came out of the water with dripping limbs were printing wet marks of their feet upon the mosaic flooring, when Patricius, who was watching them, suddenly perceived that his son had about him the signs of manhood, that he was already bearing--as Augustin says himself in his picturesque language--the first signs of turbulent youth, like another _toga praetexta_. Patricius, as a good pagan, welcomed with jubilation this promise of grand-children, and rushed off joyously to brag of his discovery to Monnica. She took the news in quite another way. Frightened at the idea of the dangers to which her son's virtue was exposed, she lectured him in private. But Augustin, from the height of his sixteen years, laughed at her. "A lot of old-women's gossip! Why does she want to talk about things she can't understand!..." Tired out at last, Monnica tried to get a promise from her son that he would at least have some restraint in his