It has been spread abroad in common but truthful speech, that the movements of concordant souls perceive one another by the regard of mutual love. For it is plain that our solicitude for each other is so much one, that to the letters which my son, the bearer of these, brought, I would — if you measure it well — have answered before they came. For in the page of service which I had dispatched through my people for a reason, I both breathed out the joy conceived from your prosperity more by affections than by words, and touched upon our need and that of our common fathers with an exultation mingled with tears.
For the rest, may divine mercy grant — which set the hope of restoring the lineage in the honor of your person, and granted that we too, of our posterity to follow, should be fathers, you being the one begetter — that, the conspiracy of enemies and the malice of the faithless being ever trodden down with prospering success, the first step of your victory may be to lay integrity in your conscience; the second, when it is examined, to prove it in the hearing; the third, to have spared your accusers after the sentence. Let the mind of the oppressed enemy be tormented even by the indulgence conferred on him, and by our twofold good — his own punishment — let him grieve, when he has groaned that you cannot be deceived, that you can show mercy.
Thus, restored to your power only for this — that he might not perish — while he is bitterly angry at the pardon offered him unbidden, let him be compelled in a certain way to envy his own life. For the rest, lord ever most pious brother, care of my heart, glory of your race, bear for a little while the trembling ineptitude of a brotherly admonition. Beware attentively of evil men, and of the hissing gifts of biting tongues, contriving flatteries and poisons; more instructed after your experiences, do not believe them. And let shrewdness make you no less cautious than innocence renders you secure. Since, the approach for the upright to explore and to harm being cut off, for this very reason you ought all the more graciously to labor at overcoming their attempts — because, reserving vengeance to the divine judgment, you have always resolved to forgive those overcome.