Letter 997

Thus the men's urging at last loosed my tongue, which had been so fettered. And what, I said, am I to say? To what end shall I make my reply, when the cloud of my despondency does not rightly allow me to see the judgment of the truth? For I am of your opinion, and, knowing the usefulness of the desert, I have admired it exceedingly for this, that I was constrained to forsake all things, house, fatherland, kinship, friends, household, possessions, subdued by my longing for it. But this same desert has destroyed for me the dearest of all, and, as you see, has left me alone, bereft of all consolation; and the suffering does not permit me to praise it, since the terrible thing that befell me has overcome the tyranny of suffering. For when one suffering masters another suffering, it gives no room to those who wish to keep their rule entirely pure, and it rejects, as hostile, that which summons us to fellowship. But, oh the simplicity of it! I have been led on to philosophize, leaving behind the lament for my child. And has my reasoning found leisure, which once it had begun, to reckon up anything else than the slaughter of Theodulus? For continually his image remains with me, picturing at one time in one way, at another in another, in varied fashion the manners of his death, the doing-away with him; and I seem to hear the painfulness of his voice, and I think I see him rolling on the ground from the blow, however it chanced; imagining in my mind those things which I should likely have learned by sight, had I been present. O my pitiable child, whether you still live, or whether you are dead! O the bitter servitude, if you have escaped death! O the unburied lot, if the barbarian sword has made away with you! Which shall I lament, the servitude? Over which shall I weep, the death? For if you are alive and a slave (which the likely course of things does not allow me to imagine; for when has the barbarian hand not been ready for the slaying, serving a temper that thirsts for human blood? for whom the scourgings are altogether daily, the commands without compassion, the threats without pardon, a beastly and bloodthirsty life, the heaviest labors and beyond their strength, a confinement from which there is no escape, a freedom beyond hope, a daily fear of death, the sword close at hand; for by this the barbarian knows how to measure out his anger, not by a strap for blows, not by a word held ready; and for great faults there is one form of penalty, death. And how often, even without fault, maddened at some time by drunkenness, or by an irrational impulse from frenzy, he has easily learned by habit to play at deadly destruction.) But if you have died, where then did you receive the slaughter of your body, from what place did the stream of your blood flow forth? how were you scattered, fouled with gore, treading out with wretched feet the death-dealing dance? How did you supplicate the barbarian as he slew you, wishing by piteous gestures to soften his cruelty? for you were each unintelligible to the other's voice, that voice which, harmoniously ordering the entreaty, bends to pity the wrath of the soul. What place has received your fallen body? What wild beasts have torn apart your limbs? With which of your flesh were the birds filled? Which of the luminaries, as it rose, beheld the secret things of your belly, plainly seeing your bowels poured out? What overcame the savage teeth of the beasts, either a glut, the remnant left over, or by sheer toughness remaining unconsumed? In the end you lie in the open air, exposed to the sun, not deemed worthy, because of the desert's solitude, of holy burial. If someone had brought and given this to me, or had led me and set me beside it, I should certainly have had some small consolation for my suffering, speaking to the remaining limb as to one living and perceiving; even if it were a bone, even if flesh, even if a hair that I chanced to see. For those who fare more moderately in their misfortunes have, as in evils, much enjoyment, and they revel in that truly second delight, nursing their kin for a long time, and taking their fill of the sight over time, sitting beside them as they breathe out their lives, and hearing their last words, accompanying them as they are carried out, and seeing the final marker set upon the tomb; all which things bring to the mourner much and great comfort, the funeral procession, and the burial rites, and the sympathy of friends, lightening his despondency. But by which of these shall I console my suffering, having learned neither the manner of his death, nor possessing the image of the corpse, such as is stamped upon the imagination at the moment of death? For of those things whose doing has not delivered their features to the memory, the forms are unstable and undefined, shaped now in one way, now in another, and, deceived by the shiftings of the apparitions, they pain the mind. O the uncertainty of these evils! O the resourceless calamity! What I am to weep for I do not know; what I am to lament I do not understand. Shall I mourn him as dead, or as living? as bound or as released? as having endured bitter servitude, or as having undergone the agony of slaughter? For a captive lies ready and at hand for every outrage, and has been laid open to punishments even against his will, holding the will of his master as sovereign over the verdicts. O you who until now have been my companion in all the affairs of life, and alone have received the trial of captivity; you shared a long sojourn abroad, you took part with me in the hardship in the desert, imitating the obedience of Isaac toward what seemed good to his father.