Letter 1019: As soon as your letters arrived, I replied with equal devotion — neither the protocol of correspondence nor the...

[...] were delivered, and at once I replied with equal scrupulousness, since neither the principle of answering letters nor the reciprocity of our affection allowed me to sit idle any longer. Now too I protest that I render and hold thanks to you, because you do not suffer the good news of reports to remain hidden from me. These things and the like I had discussed with you in earlier letters as well; but if the letter-carriers have made you a sharer in what I said, then things heaped up do not burden. For I would rather dull your ears by repetition than cheat them by silence. At my brother Hesperius' honor I exult; by your silence I am wounded. For if he has proved by the experience of affairs that I love him, he ought to have anticipated rumor by his writings, rumor which for a long time, being uncertain, offered my wavering trust only to joys. He himself, therefore, ought to have been the messenger of our common good, so that the assurance of a letter might leave nothing to the ambiguity of mere opinion. But you say that he, restrained by modesty, avoided boasting of his successes. Does anyone blush when he speaks about himself to himself? And what of the fact that he forbore to press upon me that very matter which he knew rightly pertained to us both? Yet, just as I complain of these things scrupulously, so I willingly let them go, since it befits neither my love for you to keep silent about what pains me, nor my friendship to overstep the measure of the grief inflicted. Farewell.