_Filius istarum lacrymarum_: the son of such tears!... Was it indeed the country bishop, or rather the rhetorician Augustin who, in a burst of gratitude, hit upon this sublime sentence? Certain it is that later on Augustin saw in his mother's tears as it were a first baptism whence he came forth regenerate. After having borne him according to the flesh, Monnica, by her tears and moans, gave him birth into the spiritual life. Monnica wept because of Augustin. Monnica wept for Augustin. This is rather astonishing in the case of so severe a mother--this African a trifle rough. The expressions--tears and moans and weeping--occur so often in her son's writings, that we are at first tempted to take them for pious metaphors--figures of a sacred rhetoric. We suspect that Monnica's tears must come from the Bible, an imitation of King David's penitential tears. But it would be quite an error to believe that. Monnica wept real tears. In her whole-hearted prayers she bedewed the pavement of the basilica; she moistened the balustrade against which she leant her forehead. This austere woman, this widow whose face nobody saw any more, whose body was shapeless by reason of the mass of stuffs, grey and black, which wrapped her from head to foot--this rigid Christian concealed a heart full of love. Love such as this was then a perfectly new thing. That an African woman should carry her piety to the point of fanaticism; that she should work to conquer her son to her faith; that, if he strayed from it, she should hate him and drive him out with curses--this has been seen in Africa at all times. But that a mother should mourn at the thought that her child is lost for another life; that she grows terror-stricken and despairing when she thinks that she may possess a happiness in which he will have no part, and walk in the gardens of Heaven while her child will not be there--no, this had never been seen before. "Where I am you will be," near me, against my heart, our two hearts meeting in the one same love--in this union of souls, continued beyond the grave, lies all the Christian sweetness and hope. Augustin was no longer, or not yet, a Christian. But in his tears he is the true son of his mother. This gift of tears that Saint Lewis of France begged God with so much earnestness and contrition to grant him, Monnica's son had to the full. "For him to weep was a pleasure." [1] He inebriated himself with his tears. Now, just while he was at Thagaste, he lost a friend whom he loved intensely. This death set free the fountain of tears. They are not yet the holy tears which he will shed later before God, but only poor human tears, more pathetic perhaps to our own weakness. [Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.]