The Life of Saint Monica

								

Monica took her new trouble where she had been used to take the old.
Kneeling in her favourite corner in the church, she asked help and
counsel of the Friend Who never fails. She had had her girlish ideals
of love and marriage. She had dreamt of a strong arm on which she
could lean, of a heart and soul that would be at one with her in all
that was most dear, of two lives spent together in God's love and
service. And now it seemed that it was she who would have to be
strong for both; to strive and to suffer to bring her husband's soul
out of darkness into the light of truth. Would she succeed? And if
not, what would be that married life which lay before her? She did
not dare to think. She must not fail--and yet . . . . "Thou in me, O
Lord," she prayed again and again through her tears.
It was late when she made her way homewards, and that night, kneeling
at her bedside, she laid the ideals of her girlhood at the feet of
Him Who lets no sacrifice, however small, go unrewarded. She would be
true to this new trust, she resolved, cost what it might.
Things certainly did not promise well for the young bride's
happiness. Patricius lived with his mother, a woman of strong
passions like himself, and devoted to her son. She was bitterly
jealous of the young girl who had stolen his affections, and had made
up her mind to dislike her. The slaves of the household followed, of
course, their mistress's lead, and tried to please her by inventing
stories against Monica.
Patricius, who loved his young wife with the only kind of love of
which he was capable, had nothing in common with her, and had no clue
to her thoughts or actions. He had neither reverence nor respect for
women--indeed, most of the women of his acquaintance were deserving
of neither--and he had chosen Monica for her beauty, much as he would
have chosen a horse or a dog. He thought her ways and ideas
extraordinary. She took as kindly an interest in the slaves as if
they had been of her own flesh and blood, and would even intercede to
spare them a beating. She liked the poor, and would gather these
dirty and unpleasant people about her, going so far even as to wash
and dress their sores. Patricius did not share her attraction, and
objected strongly to such proceedings; but Monica pleaded so humbly
and sweetly that he gave way, and let her do what seemed to cause her
so much pleasure. "There was no accounting for tastes," he remarked.
She would spend hours in the church praying, with her great eyes
fixed on the altar. True, she was never there at any time when she
was likely to be missed by her husband, and never was she so full of
tender affection for him as when she came home; but still, it was a
strange way of spending one's time.
There was something about Monica, it is true, that was altogether
unlike any other inmate of the house, as she went about her daily
duties, always watching for the chance of doing a kind action.
When Patricius was in one of his violent tempers, shouting, abusing,