Nebridius also, who having left his native country near Carthage,
yea and Carthage itself, where he had much lived, leaving his
excellent family-estate and house, and a mother behind, who was not to
follow him, had come to Milan, for no other reason but that with me he
might live in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. Like me
he sighed, like me he wavered, an ardent searcher after true life, and
a most acute examiner of the most difficult questions. Thus were there
the mouths of three indigent persons, sighing out their wants one to
another, and waiting upon Thee that Thou mightest give them their meat
in due season. And in all the bitterness which by Thy mercy followed
our worldly affairs, as we looked towards the end, why we should
suffer all this, darkness met us; and we turned away groaning, and
saying, How long shall these things be? This too we often said; and so
saying forsook them not, for as yet there dawned nothing certain,
which these forsaken, we might embrace.
And I, viewing and reviewing things, most wondered at the length
of time from that my nineteenth year, wherein I had begun to kindle
with the desire of wisdom, settling when I had found her, to abandon
all the empty hopes and lying frenzies of vain desires.
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