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¹ I can neither venture to advise a man of such exceptional sagacity as yourself, nor to encourage one of such high spirit and unequalled fortitude, and as for offering you consolation, it is out of the question. For if you are bearing what has happened as I hear you are, I ought rather to felicitate you on your manliness than to console you in your grief. But if you are being crushed by the terrible calamities of the Republic, I have not such a superabundance of ingenuity as to comfort you when I cannot comfort myself. It remains then that I should so order my conduct in the present and in the future, and be so constantly on the alert to further all your friends' desires, as to prove my belief that I owe you in the advancement of your cause not only all that is within my power, but even what is beyond it also.

² Anyhow, please take it either as my advice to you, or my definite opinion, or as something which out of kindness I could not suppress, when I urge you to resolve, like myself, that, if there be a Republic, it is incumbent upon you—a leading man both in fame and fact—to take your place in it, yielding to the irresistible pressure of circumstances; but if there be no Republic, you should still believe that this is the most suitable place for you to live in, even as an exile. For if liberty is what we are after, what place is not subject to this tyranny? if we are seeking any place of whatsoever kind, where