Letter 6024: Although the rights of affection that blood kinship confers might seem to make a letter unnecessary, I write anyway...

Although the bond of affection, bound fast by the law of blood-kinship, does not perish through the great extent of the regions between us, nor is the chain of lineage, which binds souls together, severed by the separation of lands, nevertheless the nourishment of love is either to see, or to address with the service of speech, the one whom you love: the secret things of the mind would go unknown were it not for the betrayal of the tongue. These things antiquity brought into practice, so that the things which are shut up within the breast should not lie hidden. As for me, even if I do not behold with my eyes the Gauls, who claim me wholly for their own on your account, yet I do not abandon them in affection. I give thanks, however, to the bearer of this present letter, who, by the occasion of his own need, has rendered service to my desires, so that amid the turbulence of feelings, for which a carrier was lacking, he might supply the wished-for service. Therefore, greeting you with the homage that is owed, I pray that the carrier may receive a return for his own kindness, and that he who has lent aid in my joy may believe that, through me, he is restored to his own prayers fulfilled.