But why do I speak of these things? Now is not the time
to ask such questions, but rather to confess to thee. I was
wretched; and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the
friendship of mortal things -- it is torn to pieces when it loses
them, and then realizes the misery which it had even before it
lost them. Thus it was at that time with me. I wept most
bitterly, and found a rest in bitterness. I was wretched, and yet
that wretched life I still held dearer than my friend. For though
I would willingly have changed it, I was still more unwilling to
lose it than to have lost him. Indeed, I doubt whether I was
willing to lose it, even for him -- as they tell (unless it be
fiction) of the friendship of Orestes and Pylades[97]; they would
have gladly died for one another, or both together, because not to
love together was worse than death to them. But a strange kind of
feeling had come over me, quite different from this, for now it
was wearisome to live and a fearful thing to die. I suppose that
the more I loved him the more I hated and feared, as the most
cruel enemy, that death which had robbed me of him.
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