Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/173

 CCCCXCVI (F VI, 14)

TO Q. LIGARIUS (IN EXILE)

I assure you that I am employing every effort and all my care and zeal in securing your recall. For, to say nothing of the fact that I have always been deeply attached to you, the signal loyalty and love of your brothers, who have the same place as yourself in the warmest feelings of my heart, suffer me to neglect no task or opportunity of displaying my fidelity and zeal towards you. But what I am doing and have done for you, I prefer your learning from their letters rather than from mine. But what my hopes are, or what I feel confident of, and consider as certain in regard to your recall, that I wish you to be informed of by myself. For if there is anyone who is nervous in matters of moment and danger, and who is always more inclined to fear a reverse than to hope for success, I am that man, and if it is a fault, I confess that I am not without it. However, on the fifth day before the Kalends of the first intercalary month, I went at the request of your brothers to wait on Cæsar at his morning reception, and endured all the humiliation and bore of securing an entrée and an interview with him. When your brothers had thrown themselves at his feet, and I had said what the merits of the case and your position demanded, I went away with a con-*