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I am in a position to read the signs and feel the truth of what I now declare to you—that you will not much longer have to endure the harassing conditions under which you are living at present, but the conditions which I share with you perhaps you will have to endure for ever.

⁵ It seems to me quite clear, in the first place, that the very man who has most to say in the matter is decidedly disposed to sanction your restoration. I am not writing thus at random. The less my intimacy with him, the more searching are my investigations. It is only to make it easier for him to give a less favourable reply to those with whom he is more angry than with you, that he has hitherto been dilatory in delivering you from your distress. As a matter of fact it is surprising how well those who are in close touch with him, and indeed those in whose company he finds most pleasure, both speak and think of you. Add, moreover, the goodwill of the commons, or rather the unanimity of all classes. Even our great Republic herself whose power, it is true, is now at its lowest (but power she is bound to have), whatever her strength may be, will at an early date, believe me, prevail upon the very men, who now hold her in subjection, to grant this boon on your behalf.

⁶ I therefore come back to this—I now even make you a promise, which at first I forebore to make. It is my intention to make friends with those in closest touch with him, who already have a high regard for me, and are much in my company, and, moreover, to worm myself into familiarity with the great man himself—a familiarity from which I have been hitherto shut out by my own lack of self-assertion, and I shall not fail to follow up every opening