always been so, to love me as much as you do and have done, you would never have allowed me to lack that judgment with which you are so well supplied,[333] nor would you have allowed me to be persuaded that the passing of the bill for the "colleges" was to our advantage.[334] But you did nothing but weep over my sorrow, as though you were my second self. This was indeed a sign of your affection: but what might have been done, if I had earned it at your hands--the spending by you of days and nights in thinking out the course I ought to have pursued--that was omitted, owing to my own culpable imprudence, not yours. Now if, I don't say you only, but if there had been anyone to urge me, when alarmed at Pompey's ungenerous answer,[335] not to adopt that most degrading course--and you are the person that, above all others, could have done it--I should either have died honourably, or we should have been living to-day triumphant. In this you must forgive me. For I find much greater fault with myself, and only call you in question afterwards, as at once my second self and the sharer in my error; and, besides, if I am ever restored, our mistake will seem still less in my eyes, and to you at least I shall be endeared by your own kindness, since there is none on my side.[336] There is something in the suggestion you mentioned as having been made in your conversation with Culleo as to a _privilegium_,[337] but by far the better course is to have the law repealed. For if no one vetoes it, what course can be safer? But if anyone is found to prohibit its passing, he will be equally able to veto a decree of the senate. Nor is there need for the repeal of anything else. For the previous law did not touch me: and if, on its publication, I had chosen to speak in its favour, or to ignore it, as it ought to have been ignored, it could not have done me any harm at all.[338] It was at this point first that my judgment failed to assist me, nay, even did me harm. Blind, blind, I say, was I in laying aside my senator's toga, and in entreating the people; it was a fatal step to take before some attack had been begun upon me by name.[339] But I am harping on the past: it is, however, for the purpose of advising you, if any action is to be taken, not to touch that law, in which there are many provisions in the interests of the people. But it is foolish for me to be laying down rules as to what you are to do and how. I only wish that something may be done! And it is on that point that your letter displays much reserve: I presume, to prevent my being too much agitated by despair. For what action do you see possible to be taken, or in what way? Through the senate? But you yourself told me that Clodius had fixed upon the doorpost of the senate-house a certain clause in the law, "that it might neither be put to the house nor mentioned."[340] How could Domitius,[341] therefore, say that he would bring it before the house?