Profound to diseased? Or just a bad day?

In Chapter 12, A Frivolous Answer, on page 286, Augustine says, "See, I answer the man who says, 'What did God do before he made heaven and earth?' I do not give the answer that someone is said to have given, evading by a joke the forces of the objection: 'He was preparing hell,' he said, 'for those prying into such deep subjects.' It is one thing to see the objection; it is another to make a joke of it. I do not see the answer in this way. I would rather respond, 'I do not know,' concerning what I do not know rather than say something for which the man inquiring about such profound matters is laughed at, while the one giving the false answer in praised."
But, at the end of Book 11, in Chapter 30, God Alone is Eternal, page 302, he says, "I will not endure the questions of such men, who by a disease that is their punishment, thirst for more knowledge than they can hold, and say, 'What did God do before he made heaven and earth?'..."

How did Saint Augustine go from saying that the man who asked this question was asking about "such profound matters" to saying he was diseased and thirsted "for more knowledge than they can hold”?

Did he decide that the man who asked these questions really was bad? Or was Saint Augustine just having a really bad day?