Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/143

 will perhaps be permanently. I think I perceive, to begin with, that the mind of him who is now all-powerful is inclined to grant your restoration. I am not writing at random. The less familiar I am with him, the more minute am I in my inquiries. It is in order that he may feel less difficulty in returning a sterner answer to those with whom he is still more angry, that he is as yet slower than he otherwise would have been in releasing you from your distressing position. His close friends, indeed, and those who are most liked by him, both speak and think of you with surprising kindness. Then there is in your favour the wish of the common people, or I should rather say a consensus of all classes. Even that which for the present, indeed, is most powerless of all, but which hereafter must necessarily be powerful, I mean the Republic itself, will with all the strength it may possess enforce your claim before long, believe me, upon those very men by whom it is now held in bondage.

I come round, then, to the point of even making you a promise, which in the first instance I refrained from doing. For I will both open my arms to his most familiar friends, who are very fond of me and are much in my society, and will worm my way into his intimacy, which up to this time my scruples have closed to me, and I will at least follow up all the paths by which I shall think it possible to arrive at the object of our wishes. In all this department I will do more than I venture to write. And other things, which I know for certain to be at your service at the hands of many, are in the highest state of preparation on my side. There is no one article of property belonging to me which I would choose to have my own rather than yours. On this point, and indeed on the whole subject, I write the less liberally, because I prefer your hoping, what I feel sure will be the case, that you will be in the enjoyment of your own again. It remains for me to beg and beseech you to keep up your spirits to the highest pitch, and not to remember those maxims only which you have learnt from other great men, but those also which you have yourself produced by your genius and industry. If you review these, you will at once hope for the best, and endure philosophically what happens, of whatsoever kind it may be. But you know this better than I, or rather than anyone. For my part, whatever I