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
dissipation--that he would avoid women of the town, and above all, that he