Kitap 6
pr.3
Or what further use can I hope to be on earth, when heaven thus frowns upon me? For it so chances that just at the moment when I began my book on the causes of the decline of eloquence, I was stricken by a like affliction. Better had I thrown that illomened work and all my ill-starred learning upon the flames of that untimely pyre that was to consume the darling of my heart, and had not sought to burden my unnatural persistence in this wicked world with the fatigue of fresh labours!
pr.4
For what father with a spark of proper feeling would pardon me for having the heart to pursue my researches further, and would not hate me for my insensibility, had I other use for my voice than to rail against high heaven for having suffered me to outlive all my nearest and dearest, and to testify that providence deigns not at all to watch over this earth of ours? If this is not proved by my own misfortune (and yet my only fault is that I still live), it is most surely manifest in theirs, who were cut off thus untimely; their mother was taken from me earlier still, she had borne me two sons ere the completion of her nineteenth year; but for her, though she too died most untimely, death was a blessing.
