While I was thus afflicted with so great perturbation of the
spirit, and when the only way of escape seemed to be for me to seek
refuge with Christ among the enemies of Christ, there came a chance
whereby I thought I could for a while avoid the plottings of my
enemies. But thereby I fell among Christians and monks who were far
more savage than heathens and more evil of life. The thing came
about in this wise. There was in lesser Brittany, in the bishopric
of Vannes, a certain abbey of St. Gildas at Ruits, then mourning
the death of its shepherd. To this abbey the elective choice of the
brethren called me, with the approval of the prince of that land,
and I easily secured permission to accept the post from my own
abbot and brethren. Thus did the hatred of the French drive me
westward, even as that of the Romans drove Jerome toward the East.
Never, God knows, would I have agreed to this thing had it not been
for my longing for any possible means of escape from the sufferings
which I had borne so constantly.

The land was barbarous and its speech was unknown to me; as for the
monks, their vile and untameable way of life was notorious almost
everywhere. The people of the region, too, were uncivilized and
lawless. Thus, like one who in terror of the sword that threatens
him dashes headlong over a precipice, and to shun one death for a
moment rushes to another, I knowingly sought this new danger in
order to escape from the former one. And there, amid the dreadful
roar of the waves of the sea, where the land's end left me no
further refuge in flight, often in my prayers did I repeat over and
over again: "From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee, when
my heart is overwhelmed" (Ps. lxi, 2).

No one, methinks, could fail to understand how persistently that