Letter 83

83. To a Tax Assessor.

My familiarity with your nobility, and our meeting face to face, has been very brief; but the knowledge gained from hearsay, through which we are joined to many of the eminent, is neither slight nor to be despised. And whether you, too, have some account of us from report, you would yourself know better. What we have of you, in any case, is such as I have said. Since God has called you to a task that offers occasion for kindness — through which it is possible to set right our native country, which has been utterly levelled to the ground — I think it fitting for me to remind your goodness of this, so that, in hope of the recompense from God, you may be willing to show yourself such a man as both to be counted worthy of undying remembrance and to become an heir of eternal rest, by making the afflictions of the hard-pressed lighter.

And since I too have a property near Chamanene, I ask you to take it under your protection as your own. Do not be surprised if I call my friends' affairs my own; for, along with my other training in virtue, I have also been schooled in friendship, and I remember the wise saying that a friend is another self. The property, then, that belongs to this man I commend to your honour as my own; and I beg you, having looked into the household's difficulties, to grant them some relief for the years that are past, and for the future to make their dwelling-place desirable to them — that dwelling which is now to be shunned and renounced because of the weight of the assessment laid upon it. I shall myself take care, when I have met with your good order, to speak more fully about each particular.