Letter 3003: It's perfectly reasonable for you to demand frequent letters from me — but it's not reasonable to jump to dark...

It is fitting that you should frequently demand letters from me, and yet it is not proper that you should suspect anything grave from my silence. You judged that I had forgotten you, because up to this day I had kept silent. And is the loyalty of my heart so unclear, or are the claims of your merit so slight, that there ought to have been any place for this opinion concerning me? Therefore our common friendship has received more injury from your suspicion than from my silence. For it is less wrong to abandon a duty out of necessity than to judge from over-hasty willfulness. You suppose that I relieve my fault by the customary kind of defense: "I was long away, I spent lengthy leisure in a country retreat, couriers were lacking." If these things are for the most part true, nevertheless, worn out by constant use, they have fallen back into the odium of being a lie. My occupations, removed from their ordinary course, hold forth nothing trivial, since a new family connection has assailed my household estate against the reason of the laws, the prosperity of the times, the agreement of the parents, the compacts of our ancestors. But I shall restrain myself and shall dwell no longer on these complaints, which the courier, if he is a friend to the truth, will unfold. Thus it will come about both that a full account of what has happened may reach you, and that I may seem to have indicated my excuse rather than my grief. [Book V, before AD 388.]