chief city of Africa;
but among the students there he found a set of wild young men who called
themselves _Eversors_--a name which meant that they turned everything
topsy-turvy; and Augustine was so much troubled by the behaviour of
these unruly lads, that he resolved to leave Carthage and go to Rome.
Monica, as we may easily suppose, had been much distressed by his
wanderings, but she never ceased to pray that he might be brought round
again. One day she went to a learned bishop, who was much in the habit
of arguing with people who were in error, and begged that he would speak
to her son; but the good man understood Augustine's case, and saw that
to talk to him while he was in such a state of mind would only make him
more self-wise than he was already. "Let him alone awhile," he said:
"only pray God for him, and he will of himself find out by reading how
wrong the Manichaeans are, and how impious their doctrine is." And then
he told her that he had himself been brought up as a Manichaean, but that
his studies had shown him the error of the sect, and he had left it.
Monica was not satisfied with this, and went on begging, even with
tears, that the bishop would talk with her son. But he said to her, "Go
thy ways, and may God bless thee; for it is not possible that the child
of so many tears should perish." And Monica took his words as if they
had been a voice from Heaven, and cherished the hope which they held out
to her.

Monica was much against Augustine's plan of removing to Rome; but he
slipped away and went on shipboard while she was praying in a chapel by
the seaside, which was called after the name of St. Cyprian. Having got
to Rome, he opened a school there, as he had done at Carthage; but he
found that the Roman youth, although they were not so rough as those of
Carthage, had another very awkward habit--namely, that, after having
heard a number of his lectures, they disappeared without paying for
them. While he was in distress on this account, the office of a public
teacher at Milan was offered to him, and he was very glad to take it.
While at Rome, he had a bad illness; but he did not at that time wish or
ask for baptism as he had done when sick in his childhood.

The great St. Ambrose was then Bishop of Milan. Augustine had heard so
much of his fame, that he went often to hear him, out of curiosity to
know whether the bishop were really as fine a preacher as he was said to
be; but by degrees, as he listened,