be expected from them. But if no help came from them, then who would help him? As he thought over his position, it seemed to him too terrible. His soul was all confusion and gloom. But there was help for it. He had to appeal to his conscience, and he began to examine into his life and his acts. And both seemed to him wicked, and, more than all, stupid. Why was he tormenting himself so? He had few pleasures, and many trials and tribulations!
The principal thing was that he felt himself all alone. Hitherto he had had a beloved mother, a father; he certainly had friends; now he had no one. No one loved him. He was a burden to everyone. He had succeeded in bringing trouble into all their lives: he had caused his mother to quarrel with his father; he had wasted his father’s substance, gathered with so much labor all his life long; he had been a dangerous and disagreeable rival to his friends. There could be no doubt about it—all would find it a relief if he were dead.
As he reviewed his life, he remembered Pamphilius, and his last meeting with him, and how Pamphilius had invited him to come there, to the Christians. And it occurred to him not to return home, but to go straight to the Christians, and remain with them.
“But was his position so desperate?” he asked himself, and again he proceeded to review what had happened, and again he was horror-struck because no one seemed to love him, and he loved no one. His mother, father, friends, did not love him, and must wish he were dead; but whom did he himself love? His friends? He was conscious that he did not love anyone. All were rivals of his, all were pitiless toward him, now that he was in disgrace. “His father?” he asked himself, and horror seized him when at this question he looked into his heart. Not only did he not love him, but he hated him for his stinginess, for the affront he had put on him. He hated him, and, moreover, he saw plainly that for his own happiness his father’s death was essential.