Were I not, stricken in spirit, groaning over my friend's misfortune, I should surely heap up many words, complaining that you—lying abed for fear of a feigned gout, while your physician quickens you in his accustomed art—are moved, propping yourselves up on feet more than poetic, more by concern for climbing mountains than for verses. But it is in sorrow, and in haste, that I have dictated these lines, being recalled, as you know, to the burial of our common son, once Protendus—if perhaps even this itself may afford some consolation to a father. Moreover, if the total loss suffered on our account is dear to your heart, keep still, until I return, this gift kept safe from dreadful raids by the Rhône as a boundary, together with our Ceratius, who has something of mine and not a little of yours, and who declares himself made a scholar by me and a man of war by you: