That bald lascivious eagle Hortensus was supposed to be the one. Hortensus would have jumped all over it, and when he’d made his bed I’d have had him lie in it and smothered him with his pillows. That was the idea, but once the thing was done there was no going back. I’d not have ruined Iacobus Amatus for all the world. Amatus was Augustine’s friend—his true father, almost, because the man life had cast in that role was unsuited: a bullying, coarse creature who relished copulation and despised affection, and who once, in a bathhouse, took note of his young son’s unanticipated erection and proclaimed to the room that such a member could only signify many children and a great future. I think—I know—Augustine took a great injury from that moment of intrusion and never forgave his father for it. That he also never forgave his body for an autonomous response to warmth and the memory of a pretty housegirl I think accounts for much of the rest of his life, and indeed for parts of mine.