Petrarch. It has dwelt in my remembrance always, from the first day that ever I read it; for the thing itself is worth remembering and its warning is wise.
S. Augustine. Of what profit has it been to you to read and remember? You had better excused yourself had you pleaded ignorance for your shield. Knowing what you do, are you not ashamed to see that your grey hairs have brought no change in you?
Petrarch. I am ashamed, I regret it, I repent of it, but as for doing more, I cannot. Moreover, you know I have this much of consolation, that she too is growing old with me.
S. Augustine. The very word of Julia, Cæsar Augustus' daughter! Doubtless it has lain fixed in your mind, has it not? When her father found fault because she would not have older people round her, as did Livia, she parried the paternal reproof by the neat rejoinder—"They will be older as soon as I am."[50]
But pray, tell me, do you suppose that at your age it will be more becoming to doat upon an old woman than to love a young one? On the contrary, it is the more unbecoming, as the reason for loving is less. Well may you take shame to yourself never to grow any wiser though you see your body daily growing older. That is all I can say on the subject of shame.
But, as Cicero tells us, it is but a poor thing to make shame do the work of reason; and so to reason, the true source of all remedies, let us now turn for help. You will assuredly find it through using deep Reflection—the third of the things that turn the soul away from love. Remember what you are now called to is that citadel wherein alone you can be quite safe against the incursions of passion and by which alone you will deserve the name of Man. Consider, then, first how noble a thing is the soul, and that so great is it that were I to discourse as I should wish, I must needs make a whole book thereon. Consider, again, the frailty and vileness of the body, which would demand no less full treatment than the other. Think also of the shortness of our life, concerning which many great men have left their books. Think of the flight of time, that no one yet has been able to express in words. Think of Death, the fact so certain, the hour so uncertain, but everywhere and at all times imminent. Think how men are deceived just in this one point, that they believe they can put off what in fact never can be put off: for no one is really such a fool as, supposing the question is asked him, not to answer that of course some day he will die. And so let not the hope of longer life mock you, as it mocks so many others, but rather lay up in your heart the verse that seems as it were an oracle of heaven—
"Count every day that dawns to be your last,"[51]
For is it not so that to mortal men every day is in truth the last, or all but the last? Consider, moreover, how shameful it is to have men point the finger at you, and to become a public laughing-stock; remember, too, how ill your profession accords with a life like this. Think how this woman has injured your soul, your body, your fortune. Remember what you have borne for her, all to no purpose: how many times you have been mocked, despised, scorned; think what flatteries, what lamentations, and of all the tears you have cast upon the wind; think how again and again she has heaped all this on you with an air of haughty disdain, and how if for a moment she showed herself more kind, it was but for the passing of a breath and then was gone.
Think, moreover, how much you have added to her fame, and of what she has subtracted from your life: how you have ever been jealous for her good name, but she has been always regardless of your very self and condition. Remember how she has turned you aside from loving God, and into how great miseries you have fallen, known to me, but which I pass in silence lest the birds of the air carry the matter abroad.
Think, moreover, what tasks on all sides are claiming your attention, and by which you may do far more good and deserve far more honour: how many things you have on hand, as yet uncompleted, to which it would be far better for you to return, and devote more time, instead of attempting them so perfunctorily as you have en doing lately.