Perhaps that was the right choice. I cannot imagine what it would have been to see him standing there in the midst of us, in his fine robes, granting the love and forgiveness that is his calling to those who should expect them of him most personally, given not from the soul or the intellect but from the bone. It was neither Christ nor Monica that took Augustine from us, but Augustine himself, and it is Augustine who pursues himself with dreams of hell, and Augustine who condemns himself in the night for his sins, and Augustine who bids him turn his face away. It is Augustine who cannot trust in the mercy of the God whose mercy he expounds, and must crawl upon his face for absolution when he has done no wrong save that which he believes is duty. It is Augustine whose soul is growing more and more like honey, so hungry and dry, and Augustine whose heart is preserved and dead in a sweetness that brings no relief.