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198 dearly, it is all in all that there should be no one of mine who dislikes you or is disliked by you. . . I have seen, and seen to the bottom, your tender interest in all my varying fortunes. Often and often I have found your congratulations on my success sweet to me, and your support in my hours of anxiety most cheering. Now when you are absent, it is not only that I miss your counsel, which none can give so well, but likewise the interchange of talk which is sweeter with you than with any one. I feel the void especially—where shall I say especially? in my calling as a statesman, which does not admit of a moment's neglect? or in my labours at the bar, which I once undertook to help me to rise, and which I must now keep up to win influence for the support of my position? or lastly in my home circle? In all these, and the more so since my brother has left, I long for your presence and conversation. . . . You and I have hitherto been too delicate to utter all these feelings; but now their expression seems to be called for by that part of your letter in which you strive to clear yourself from all reproaches and to justify yourself and your conduct."

This letter was written in December, 61 B.C. In the following February he refers again to the same topic. "My chief want at present is a man with whom to share all my anxieties, one who loves me, and has sense, and with whom I can talk without pretence or reserve or concealment. For my brother, the most open and loving soul in the world, is gone. Metellus is not a man, but just a desert island—