Letter 3005: This letter's Latin text is heavily corrupted by OCR artifacts and critical apparatus, making continuous translation...

Reason, to be sure, is wont to soften the sicknesses of the mind, but the wound to our fortune is so great that not even your soothing and persuasive eloquence could draw a scar over it. Perhaps it may be that the long passage of time will at some point blunt our slackened grief; for to all evils an end comes from time. Meanwhile the words of those who console fall cold, nor does a mind made deaf by injury lend its ears to good counsel. This is now the third mourning for me over the best of brothers. After so many miseries, who would not suppose that I had learned patience? Yet I, for my part, grieve the more, the more feeble this misfortune has found us. Now too those wounds grow raw again to which long duration had given numbness; for the latest blow tears open even the old gashes with fresh pain. Nor am I unaware that many examples of an unconquered spirit can be cited. Pericles, having recently lost his children, came into the council-chamber: but the cause of his country compelled him. A grievous report about his son did not draw Anaxagoras the natural philosopher away from his disputations: but he was paying to philosophy a disregard of his own calamity. Marcus Horatius, when the death of his pledge [his son] had been made known to him, ordered the corpse to be carried out: but such steadfastness was fitting in one who was dedicating the Capitol. You see what spirit is mine; and yet life must be carried on. For the love of the light, given by nature, props up the weakness of grief. I have nearly passed over what ought to have been set among the very first matters. I render you the most heaped-up thanks, because you appointed Proiectus, our familiar friend, whom you had summoned into your company, to be my comfort. From this I understand how great a necessity it was that prevented you from coming. Yet I, who could not see you yourself, have seen your mind, for which it was not enough to apply a remedy to our fortune by letter. For you added a certain commission [embassy] which, by its own constancy, might break the force of the evil, because you knew that the consolations of letters end with the reading. We have advanced into your praises, since you yourself refer your scruple rather to conscience than to glory. Therefore let the discourse have a limit, which affection will never have toward you. Farewell.