Professors VI. — Alethius Minervius, Son of the Above, a Rhetorician

O FLOWER of our youths and your father's fair hope though not your country's abiding possession Alethius the Rhetorician! in earliest years you were a teacher: at an age when it would have been no disgrace for you a stripling, to have been learning still, ere you were come to manhood's estate, you were already held even a master equal to your father, and, afterwards, to Patera. He, with the brilliance of his renown and gifts, enriched the walls of haughty Rome: you, greater than either, were content to lead on the bright banners of a company in your native town, Bordeaux. You had every blessing Fate can give, but withal felt the tooth of her cruel jealousy. For Fortune, too early ripe, gave you every gift and then snatched them away — your rhetoric, denied the fruit of mature age; your brilliant marriage marred by your father's restlessness; the wealth of your line and your wife's left without heir. Even as the grass of midsummer, you were but displayed - and snatched away at once, frustrating your friends' hopes, and were enriched with goods that would not endure. With what prophetic utterance is that verse of Horace fraught:

"Nothing there is that is wholly blessed."