Afraid that you will interrupt me--you? In the first place, if I were as busy as you think, do you know what interruption means? Have you taken a lesson from Ateius?[533] So help me heaven, in my eyes you give _me_ a lesson in a kind of learning which I never enjoy unless you are with me. Why, that you should talk to me, interrupt me, argue against me, or converse with me, is just what I should like. Nothing could be more delightful! Never, by Hercules, did any crazy poet read with greater zest his last composition than I listen to you, no matter what business is in hand, public or private, rural or urban. But it was all owing to my foolish scrupulousness that I did not carry you off with me when I was leaving town. You confronted me the first time with an unanswerable excuse--the health of my son: I was silenced. The second time it was both boys, yours and mine: I acquiesced.[534] Now comes a delightful letter, but with this drop of gall in it--that you seem to have been afraid, and still to be afraid, that you might bore me. I would go to law with you if it were decent to do so; but, by heaven! if ever I have a suspicion of such a feeling on your part, I can only say that I shall begin to be afraid of boring _you_ at times, when in your company. [I perceive that you have sighed at this. 'Tis the way of the world: "But if you lived on earth" ...I will never finish the quotation and say, "Away with all care!"[535] Marius,[536] again, I should certainly have forced into my sedan--I don't mean that famous one of Ptolemy that Anicius got hold of:[537] for I remember when I was conveying him from Naples to Baiæ in Anicius's eight-bearer sedan, with a hundred armed guards in our train, I had a real good laugh when Marius, knowing nothing of his escort, suddenly drew back the curtains of the sedan--he was almost dead with fright and I with laughing; well, this same friend, I say, I should at least have carried off, to secure, at any rate, the delicate charm of that old-fashioned courtesy, and of a conversation which is the essence of culture. But I did not like to invite a man of weak health to a villa practically without a roof, and which even now it would be a compliment to describe as unfinished. It would indeed be a special treat to me to have the enjoyment of him here also. For I assure you that the neighbourhood of Marius makes the sunshine of that other country residence of mine.[538] I will see about getting him put up in the house of Anicius. For I myself, though a student, can live with workpeople in the house. I get this philosophy, not from Hymettus, but from Arpinum.[539] Marius is feebler in health and constitution. As to interrupting my book[540]--I shall take from you just so much time for writing as you may leave me. I only hope you'll leave me none at all, that my want of progress may be set down to your encroachment rather than to my idleness! In regards to politics, I am sorry that you worry