surprised that, like a first-rate artist, you take pleasure in
the brilliant works of your own hands. However, people's
wrong-headedness--I don't like to use a harsher word--surpasses belief;
they might have secured me by their sympathy in a cause in which they
were all equally interested, yet they have alienated me by their
jealousy: for by their carping and most malicious criticisms I must tell
you that I have been all but driven from that old political standpoint
of mine, so long maintained, not, it is true, so far as to forget my
position, but far enough to admit at length some consideration for my
personal safety also. Both might have been amply secured if there had
been any good faith, any solidity in our consulars: but such is the
frivolity of most of them, that they do not so much take pleasure in my
political consistency, as offence at my brilliant position. I am the
more outspoken in writing this to you, because you lent your support,
not only to my present position, which I obtained through you, but also
long ago to my reputation and political eminence, when they were, so to
speak, but just coming into existence; and at the same time because I
see that it was not, as I used formerly to think, my want of curule
pedigree that excited prejudice: for I have noticed in your case, one of
the noblest of the land, a similar exhibition of base jealousy, and
though they did not object to class you among the _noblesse_, they were
unwilling that you should take any higher flight. I rejoice that your
fortune has been unlike mine: for there is a great difference between
having one's reputation lowered and one's personal safety abandoned to
the enemy. In my case it was your noble conduct that prevented me from
being too much disgusted with my own; for you secured that men should
consider more to have been added to my future glory than had been taken
from my present fortune. As for you--instigated both by your kindness to
myself and my affection for you, I urge you to use all your care and
industry to obtain the full glory, for which you have burned with such
generous ardour from boyhood, and never, under anyone's injurious
conduct, to bend that high spirit of yours, which I have always admired
and always loved. Men have a high opinion of you; they loudly praise
your liberality; they vividly remember your consulship. You must surely
perceive how much more marked, and how much more prominent these
sentiments will be, if backed