“TO OLYMPIAS

“Have no feat about this either, I mean my journey; as I have already written you word, I am improved in health and strength. The climate has agreed with me; and my conductors have shown every wish, and done all in their power—more, indeed, than I desired myself—to make me comfortable. I have written this when on the point of starting from Nicæa, the 3rd of July. Give me some account from time to time of your own health; and also tell me that the cloud of despondency has passed away from you. If I were assured of this from yourself, I should write more frequently to you, under a feeling that my letters might be of service; but, so it is, many persons have crossed to this place who might have brought me a letter from you, and it has been a great sorrow that I have received nothing.”—Ep. 10.

Perhaps he exaggerated his own hopefulness, in order to increase hers. He describes his state of feeling more exactly, and reveals more fully what occupied his thoughts, in a letter of about the same date to Constantius, a priest of Antioch, and intimate friend, who had taken a forward part together with the Saint in extending Christianity to Phœnicia. This, as so many of his other letters, shows us how little his personal troubles had damped his evangelical zeal or his pastoral solicitude.