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 great power. And under that tribulation Augustin before all other led a bitter and right holy life, for the tears of his eyes were to him bread day and night, when he saw some slain, others chased away, the churches without priests, and the city wasted with the inhabitants. And among these many evils, by the sentence of a certain wise man he comforted himself, saying: 'Thou shalt not be great in weening great things, because that the woods and stones fall, and they that be mortal die.' He called his brethren, and said: ’I have prayed our Lord that either he take away from us these perils or send to us patience, or take me out of this life that I be no more constrained to have so many cursednesses or ill-haps,' And the third thing that he required he had. For in the third month of the siege he travailed in the fevers, and lay down on his bed. And when he understood his departing he did do write the seven psalms of penance in a place against the wall, and read them lying in his bed and wept abundantly. And because he should entend to God the more diligently, and that his entent should not be letted by nobody, ten days tofore his death he suffered nobody to enter in to him but if it were his physician, or else when his refection was brought him.

A certain sick man came because he should lay his hand on him and thereby to heal him of his infirmity: and S. Augustin answered to him: ’Son, that which thou requirest of me weenest thou that I may do such thing that I ne never did? If I might do it, I would then heal myself.' And the man required of him always, affirming that he was