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see you. I was surprised at your never having been in Rome after I had left, and I am still surprised at it. I am not sure what it is in particular that keeps drawing you away from Rome. If solitude is what attracts you, because you are writing or busy with some work of the kind you are generally engaged upon, I am glad, and find no fault with your arrangement; for nothing can be more refreshing than such solitude, not only in these cheerless and lugubrious times, but even in times of tranquillity, the times we pray for, especially to a mind like yours, whether we regard it as being tired out and therefore now in need of repose after its arduous engagements, or as a mine of erudition and therefore always producing something out of its store to give pleasure to others and reflect glory upon yourself.
2 If, however, as you suggest, you have abandoned yourself to tears and dejection, I grieve, of course, because you grieve and are so distressed; but if you allow me to say quite frankly what I feel, I cannot but blame you. Come now! Shall you be the only man not to see what is obvious—you who with your keen wits penetrate the deepest secrets? You, the only man not to perceive that your daily lamentations are doing you no good; you, not to perceive that the anxieties your common-sense calls upon you to minimize are thus being doubled?
3 Well, if I can do no good by trying to persuade you, I entreat you as a personal favour and specially request you, if there is anything you wish to do for my sake, to burst the bonds of those worries of yours and come back to live with us; in other words, to resume your normal habits of life, whether such as are common to all of us, or such as are peculiarly and