[The family affection of Cicero might be illustrated by many
such letters as the following:]
It being now eleven days since I left you, I am scrawling this little
bit of a note just as I am leaving my country-house before it is light.
I think of being at my place at Anagnia to-day, and Tusculum to-morrow;
only one day there, so that I shall come up all right to time on the
28th; and oh, if I could but run on at once to embrace my Tullia and
give Attica a kiss! Talking of this, by-the-by, do please write and let
me know while I am stopping at Tusculum what her prattle is like, or if
she is away in the country, what her letters to you are about. Meanwhile
either send or give her my love, and Pilia too. And even though we shall
meet immediately, yet will you write to me anything you can find to
say?
P. S.--I was just fastening up this letter, but your courier has arrived
here after a long night journey with your letter. I was very sorry, you
may be sure, to find on reading it that Attica is feverish. Everything
else that I was waiting for I now know from your note; but when you tell
me that to have a little fire in the morning "_sent le vieillard_," I
retort _il le sent plus_ for one's poor old memory to begin to totter:
because it was the 29th I had promised to Axius; the 30th to you; and
the day of my arrival, the 31st, to Quintus. So take that for
yourself--you shall have no news. Then what on earth is the good of
writing? And what good is it when we are together and chatter whatever
comes to our tongues? Surely there is something in _causerie_ after all;
even if there is nothing under it, there is always at least the
delicious feeling that we are talking with one another.