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however, you manage to bring off the election of censors, and if you perform the duties of your own censorship, as you ought and as you can, I feel sure you will be a permanent pillar of strength not only to yourself but to all your relatives. I would have you fight tooth and nail to prevent any extension of my period of office, so that when I have satisfied your claims upon me here, I may be able to demonstrate my goodwill towards you at home as well.
4 As to what you tell me of the devotion to you of all men of every class, I am as little surprised as I am greatly pleased that it has so fallen out; and I have had the same account of it from intimate friends of mine. I am, therefore, highly delighted not only that all due tribute is paid to you in particular, whose friendship is as great an honour as a pleasure to me, but also that there still survives in our state an attitude of devoted attachment, with practically no dissentients, to men of fortitude and energy; and that in itself in my own case has ever been the only reward I have gained by my laborious days and sleepless nights.
5 I am extremely surprised, however, that it has come about that the young man[1] whom I only saved from ruin by the greatest exertions in two trials[2] involving capital punishment, should have proved so utterly reckless as to forget, when he undertook to represent[3] all your enemies, the patron of all his fortunes and of his whole career; especially when you had a handsome balance of distinctions, or shall I say safeguards, to your credit, while he, to say the least of it, had a heavy deficit in these respects. The silly and childish things he has been saying had already been fully reported to me by my dear friend