Such was my condition at that time; I wept bitterly and found comfort in this bitterness. So unhappy was I, and this most miserable life turned out to be dearer to me than my friend. Of course, I would like to change it, but I would not want to lose it, just like I would not want to lose him. And I do not know whether I would have wanted to die even for him, as they say about Orestes and Pylades, if it were not a fiction that they wanted to die together one for the other, because life apart was worse for them than death. A feeling was born in me that was quite the opposite of this; I had a cruel aversion to life and a fear of death. I think that the more I loved him, the more I hated death and feared it as a fierce enemy. who took it from me. Suddenly, I thought, it would swallow up all people: it could have carried it away.

Here is my heart, my God, here it is – look inside it, this is how I remember it. My hope, Thou Who cleansest me from the impurity of such attachments, directing my eyes to Thee and "freeing my feet from the snares." I wondered that other people lived, because the one I loved as if he could not die was dead: and I wondered even more that I, his alter ego, were alive when he died. Someone said well about his friend: "Half of my soul." And I felt that my soul and his soul were one soul in two bodies, and life filled me with horror: I did not want to live half a life. Perhaps that is why I was afraid to die, lest the one whom I loved so much should die at all.

Oh, madness, which does not know how to love a man as a man should! O fool who is indignant at the fate of man! Such was I then: I raged, sighed, cried, was upset, I had neither peace nor reasoning. Everywhere with me was my torn and bloody soul, and it was impatient with me, and I could not find a place to put it. Groves with their charm, games, singing, gardens that breathed fragrance; the sumptuous feasts, the bed of bliss, the very books and poems – nothing gave her peace. Everything was terrifying, even the daylight; everything that was not it was disgusting and hateful. Only in tears and lamentations did my soul rest a little, but when I had to take it away from there, my misfortune weighed heavily on me. To You, Lord, it was necessary to lift her up and heal her with You. I knew this, but I did not want to and could not, especially since I did not think of You as something solid and true. For it was not You, but the empty ghost and my delusion that were my god. And if I tried to put her here to rest, she would roll in the void and fall on me again, and I was left with me: an unfortunate place where I could not be and from which I could not leave. Where would my heart run away from my heart? Where would I run away from myself? Where would he not go after himself?

And yet I ran away from my hometown. My eyes searched less for him where they were not accustomed to see, and I moved from Tagasta to Carthage.

Time does not pass in vain and does not roll without any impact on our feelings: it does amazing things in the soul. Days came and went one after another; As they came and went, they threw into me the seeds of other hopes and other memories; gradually they treated me with old pleasures, and my sorrow began to give way to them; however, they began to come – not other sorrows, it is true, but causes for other sorrows. Did not this sorrow penetrate so easily and deeply into my very heart because I poured my soul into the sand, loving a mortal being as if he were not subject to death?

And it was most of all that I was comforted and brought back to life by new friends who shared with me the love of what I loved instead of You: an endless fairy tale, a complete deception, which by its unclean touch corrupted our minds, itching with the desire to listen. And if one of my friends had died, this tale would not have died to me.

There was something else that fascinated me more in this friendly intercourse: the general conversation and merriment, the mutual benevolent helpfulness; joint reading of sweet-mouthed books, joint fun and mutual respect; sometimes friendly quarrels, such as a man has with himself – the very rarity of disagreements seems to spice up a long agreement – mutual learning, when one teaches the other and in turn learns from him; the dreary expectation of those who are absent; A joyful meeting of the newcomers. All such manifestations of loving and beloved hearts, in faces, in words, in eyes, and in a thousand sweet expressions, fuse souls together as if on fire, forming one out of many.

That's what we love about friends, and we love in such a way that a person feels guilty if he doesn't return love for love. Only an expression of benevolence is required of a friend. Hence this sorrow on the occasion of death; the darkness of sorrow; a heart intoxicated with bitterness, into which sweetness has turned; the death of the living, because the dead have lost their lives.

Blessed is he who loves Thee, a friend in Thee, and an enemy for Thy sake. Only he does not lose anything dear to Him who cannot be lost. And who is this if not our God? God, who "created heaven and earth" and "fills them," for in filling them He also created them. No one loses You, except those who leave You, and those who have left You, where will they go and where will they flee? Only from Thee, the merciful, to Thee, the wrathful. Where will he not find Thy law in the punishment that has attained it? And "Thy law is truth," and "Truth is Thee."

As I reflected on it, I saw that each body is a kind of whole, and therefore beautiful, but at the same time it is pleasant because it is in harmony with the other. Thus the individual member agrees with the whole body, the shoe fits the foot, etc. These considerations poured in from the very depths of my heart, and I wrote a work "On the Beautiful and Appropriate," I think, in two or three books. You know this, Lord: I have lost my memory. I don't have the books themselves; They got lost, I don't know how.

What prompted me, O Lord my God, to dedicate these books to Hyerius, a Roman orator whom I did not know personally, but whom I admired for his resounding reputation as a scholar. I was told some of his sayings, and I liked them. I liked him all the more because others liked him very much, and they praised him with praise, wondering how the Syrian, who at first knew how to speak Greek perfectly, later became a master of Latin speech and an outstanding expert in all matters relating to philosophy.

He was the type of speaker I liked so much that I wanted to be one of them. I erred in my pride, "I was carried by every wind," and Thy guidance was completely hidden from me. And how can I know, and how can I confidently confess to Thee, that I loved him more for his love and praise than for the occupations for which he was praised? If the same people had not praised him, but scolded him and told the same things about him, but with abuse and contempt, I would not have been inflamed with love for him, although neither his occupations nor he himself would have been different: only the feelings of the narrators would have been different.

This is where the feeble soul is thrown, which has not yet clung to the strong truth. It is carried and whirled, thrown here and there, depending on the direction of the whirlwind of words and opinions. They block the light for her, and she does not see the truth. It is here – in front of us.

It was very important for me then that my book and my writings became known to this man. His approval would have made me burn with even greater zeal; his disapproval would have wounded my vain heart, which had no support in Thee. And yet, with love, I willingly turned before my mind's eye the question of the beautiful and the proper, about which I wrote to him, and was delighted with my work, without needing anyone's praise.