“TO EVETHIUS

“Though I am absent from you in body, yet in charity I am bound to your soul; so large a claim of friendship have you deposited with me, in the great attention and kindness which you showed towards me in your own city. Therefore, wherever I go, I never fail to make my acknowledgments to you. And I beg you to write to me frequently, and to give me good tidings about your health. As regards myself, I finished my whole journey without trouble or danger, and am now living at Cucusus, revelling in the quiet and leisure of the place, and enjoying great attention and kindness at the hands of its inhabitants.”—Ep. 173.

What is a still stronger evidence of his placable spirit is the tone in which he speaks of the vile Pharetrius himself, in a letter to a friend, who seems to have held some high post at Constantinople, and who had taken a prominent part in defending the Saint from his enemies. Prudence also, it will be observed, dictated this course.