1.  I hesitated to address your excellency, from the idea that, just as to the eye when inflamed even the mildest of remedies causes pain, so to a soul distressed by heavy sorrow, words offered in the moment of agony, even though they do bring much comfort, seem to be somewhat out of place.  But I bethought me that I should be speaking to a Christian woman, who has long ago learned godly lessons, and is not inexperienced in the vicissitudes of human life, and I judged it right not to neglect the duty laid upon me.  I know what a mother’s heart is, i.e.from his knowledge of what Emmelia had been to him.  Yet to the celibate the wife of Nectarius might have anticipated the well known retort of Constance to Pandulph in King John. and when I remember how good and gentle you are to all, I can reckon the probable extent of your misery at this present time.  You have lost a son whom, while he was alive, all mothers called happy, with prayers that their own might be like him, and on his death bewailed, as though each had hidden her own in the grave.  His death is a blow to two provinces, both to mine and to Cilicia.  With him has fallen a great and illustrious race, dashed to the ground as by the withdrawal of a prop.  Alas for the mighty mischief that the contact with an evil demon was able to wreak!  Earth, what a calamity thou hast been compelled to sustain!  If the sun had any feeling one would think he might have shuddered at so sad a sight.  Who could utter all that the spirit in its helplessness would have said?