IT IS PERHAPS ironic, and a sign of how far he’d come, that a decade after his move to Milan the middle-aged Augustine who had roamed in search of happiness found that the blinking beacon of hoped-for joy kept receding despite his pursuit. This might explain why he would come to identify happiness with rest. If the young Augustine was tempted to imagine that “the road is life,” that happiness was synonymous with adventure, with going out, with departing for distant shores and escaping the strictures of home, then his midlife Confessions reveal a U-turn of sorts. If the aspiring Augustine was
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