For some time Ambrose remained at home, learning the duties of a prefect under Probus. He early showed great talent for managing men, a quick eye for detecting crime, impartiality in giving judgment, and firmness in seeing it carried out. Probus must have watched anxiously to see how far the young man's sense of justice and his desire for mercy would act on each other, but what he saw satisfied him. Ambrose knew at once what was the important point in every matter, and never allowed his mind to be confused by things that had nothing to do with the real question. This was his safeguard as a judge, and this was the principle he held to all through his life, which caused him to be such a different man from Hildebrand or Thomas à Becket, or many great bishops who came after him. To Ambrose, murder was murder, theft was theft, whether it was done by a Christian or a pagan, and the punishment was equally heavy for both.
Perhaps the emperor Valentinian may have noted the qualities of the young lawyer, or perhaps he may have consulted with Probus, but in any case, in the year 372 Ambrose was sent off to govern the whole of North Italy, under the title of 'consul.' At the utmost he was only twenty-nine, and he may have been younger, for the date of his birth is uncertain. But his head was in no way turned by his position, and the emperor, a well-meaning but tactless man, beheld with satisfaction that the restless people of Milan, the capital of the north, were growing daily quieter under the rule of Ambrose. What his own severity had been powerless to accomplish Ambrose carried through without any difficulty. The parties, religious as well as political, into which the city was split up, all came to him with their grievances, and, wonderful to say, never murmured at his verdicts. Before he had been consul much more than a year, Milan was in a quieter state than it had been for half a century.
But the death of the bishop early in 374 threatened to plunge everything into the old confusion. Valentinian was consulted, but refused to have anything to do in the matter of the election of a new prelate; it was not his business, he said. So the bishops streamed in to Milan from the cities of the north and met in the gallery of one of the large round churches that were built in those days. In great excitement the people pressed in below; so much depended on who was chosen—to which party he belonged. For hours and hours they waited, and every now and then a murmur ran through the crowd that the announcement was about to be made; but it died away as fast as it came, and the weary waiting began again. At last the strain grew too great, and it was quite plain that the smallest spark of disagreement would kindle a great fire.
A man wiser than the rest saw this, and hastened to summon Ambrose to the spot.
'Do not delay an instant,' he cried, 'or it will be too late. Only you can keep the peace, so come at once.'
'Do not delay an instant,' he cried, 'or it will be too late.'
Ambrose needed no urging. What his friend said was true, and, besides, he was as a magistrate bound if possible to prevent a riot, or, if one had already begun, to quell it.
The loud, angry voices ceased as he entered the church, and amidst a dead silence he begged the crowd to be patient yet a little while longer, and to remember that the choice of a bishop was one that affected them all, and could not be made in a hurry. As he spoke he noted that the excitement began to grow less, and by the time he had ended the flushed faces were calm again. Then the voice of a child rang through the church.