And to my eternal sorrow, no child, for whose death Augustine will—if there is truly a God and that God has any concern for justice—spend at least a little time in the hell he so drearily contemplates for having fathered the boy on me in the first place. Adeodatus died in a wayside inn, and not all the noble metals nor fast horses could have brought me there in time to hold his hand. Nor save him—because if one might will one impossible thing, why not two, or a multitude? Show me but once how to bend the laws of fate, and I will tie them in such knots as shall make your head spin, and out of this single wretched piece of twine I will weave a paradise, bend the world back upon itself until it is truly glorious, and that word means once again what it pretends.