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and I get my news late. But I do congratulate you, and earnestly pray that your tribunate may redound to your everlasting honour; and I exhort you to let yourself be guided and controlled in all things by your own common sense, and not be carried away by the proposals of others. There is nobody who can give you sounder advice than yourself; if you listen to yourself, you will never slip, I am not writing this in a haphazard way; I understand to whom I am writing; I know your spirit, I know your sagacity, I am not afraid of your showing either timidity or stupidity in anything you do, if only you maintain what you yourself feel to be right.

² I am sure you understand the political situation into which you have—no, not stumbled, but stepped; for it was by deliberate choice and by no accident that you flung your tribunate into the very crisis of things; and I doubt not that you reflect how potent in politics is opportunity, how shifting the phases, how incalculable the issues, of events, how easily swayed are men's predilections, what pitfalls there are and what insincerity in life.

But I beg of you, do not let your thoughts and anxieties take a new direction, but do just what I suggested at the beginning of my letter, have a talk with yourself, invite yourself to a consultation; give ear, and no deaf ear, to yourself; the man who can give better advice than you can to another, is far to seek; the man who will give better to yourself, does not exist. Ye everlasting Gods! why am I not at your elbow, to be the spectator of your exploits, to share or be a partner in your schemes, or even your agent in their execution? Though you have not the slightest need of it, still such is the