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¹ I have read your letter, in which you tell me that you are pleased because I keep you so regularly informed on all matters, and you can easily see my goodwill to you. As to the latter, it is essential that I should prove my sincere affection for you if I would be the man you would have me be; as for the letter-writing it is a pleasure to me, so that widely separated as we now are by time and space, I may converse with you as often as possible by correspondence. And if I do so less frequently than you expect, the reason will be that my letters are not of such a nature that I can entrust them in a casual way to anybody. Whenever I can get hold of trustworthy men in whose hands I can properly put them, I shall not miss the opportunity.

² You want to know how each man stands in the matter of loyalty and friendly feeling towards yourself: well, it is hard to speak of particular persons. There is one fact, however—I have often hinted it to you before—which, now that all has been thoroughly sifted and investigated, I venture to set down here too, and that is that certain persons, and those most of all who most of all ought to have supported you, and could have done so to the greatest extent, have conceived an inordinate jealousy of your position, and that, though the cases are different, there has appeared a close analogy between the present crisis in your affairs and the past crisis in mine; for while the men you had fallen foul of in the interests of the state, attacked you openly, those whose ascendancy,