In delicate health as she was, she bade her people prepare a litter for her, and so she had herself carried into Piacenza, to the Church of St.
Augustine.

There, having confessed and received the Sacrament, upon her knees before a minor altar consecrated to St.Monica, she made solemn vow that if my father's life was spared she would devote the unborn child she carried to the service of God and Holy Church.
Two months thereafter word was brought her that my father, his recovery by now well-nigh complete, was making his way home.
On the morrow was I born--a votive offering, an oblate, ere yet I had drawn the breath of life.
It has oft diverted me to conjecture what would have chanced had I been born a girl--since that could have afforded her no proper parallel.

In the circumstance that I was a boy, I have no faintest doubt but that she saw a Sign, for she was given to seeing signs in the slightest and most natural happenings.

It was as it should be; it was as it had been with the Sainted Monica in whose ways she strove, poor thing, to walk.

Monica had borne a son, and he had been named Augustine.