Letter 3021: I wish I could use you as my envoy to the excellent consul to explain and excuse my absence -- if I knew that you...

I should be willing to employ you as my advocate before the most excellent consul, to clear and excuse my absence, if I knew that you yourself would be the first to pardon me in this matter. For when I consider the affection you both bear me, I fear that, just as you both cherish me equally, so you may likewise reproach me alike. Who, then, is to be enlisted as the defender of my cause? My own fortune, of course, whose plea, though wretched, is nevertheless just. For divine law does not permit those in mourning to attend upon joyful duties. Perhaps, too, my sadness would dampen your cheerfulness; since indeed it always loves to happen that we draw the disposition of our mind from the countenance of our friends. Therefore pardon the fact that we are absent, and before that distinguished man, the consul, look kindly upon my absence. To glory in his honor is ours; to be present at his auspicious inauguration belongs to the fortunate.