Continual misfortune has this one advantage, that it ends by rendering callous those whom it is always scourging. Ill fortune has given you no respite, and has not left even your birthday free from the bitterest grief: you lost your mother as soon as you were born, nay, while you were being born, and you came into life, as it were, an outcast: you grew up under a stepmother, whom you made into a mother by all the obedience and respect which even a real daughter could have bestowed upon her: and even a good stepmother costs everyone dear. You lost your most affectionate uncle, a brave and excellent man, just when you were awaiting his return: and, lest fortune should weaken its blows by dividing them, within a month you lost your beloved husband, by whom you had become the mother of three children. This sorrowful news was brought you while you were already in mourning, while all your children were absent, so that all your misfortunes seemed to have been purposely brought upon you at a time when your grief could nowhere find any repose.