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My dearest nephew,
You ask me how, in all honor, you can abandon your business partner, with whom you hold the strongest bonds of friendship.
I will say again what I have said before: I admire you greatly for that friendship. Too few people in our kingdom acknowledge the leavening effect that friendship can have upon those who are trapped in a life of immorality. Fewer still are willing to concede that the gods did not give all of humanity's virtue to the higher classes, and that many of the better folk in the commoner class have important lessons to teach us. Your partner, through his steadfast friendship to you and his desire to consider the boys' best interests in his enterprise, has shown himself to be of the better sort.
Yet have you asked yourself whether you are in fact showing true friendship to him by remaining his partner? You cannot dissuade a friend from thieving by assisting him in his thefts. If you wish, as you say, to convince your friend that it is wrong to prostitute boys, then I believe that the best action you can take is to refuse to help him run his pleasure house. In that way, he may be shocked into realization of the wrong he is doing.
A personal note on a matter that you do not raise in your letter: My dear nephew, I hope that you do not consider me pretentiously pious if I say that I pray daily for you at the temple. That you wish to benefit the boys in your house, that you wish to be loyal to your friend and raise his vision to higher realms – all this I trust that the gods will take into account when judging you. Yet a man who engages in immoral acts with a woman in hope of convincing her to marry him has committed immorality just the same. My mind is filled with dreadful images of the time when, like myself and all frail humanity, you must face the gods for your life's work. I very much fear that, if you continue in your present path, Mercy will refuse to acknowledge you as her own and will hand you over to her Brother for torment. In short, I believe that your soul is in grave peril. . . .
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