The Charge Disproved

With such a man, the slanderer imagined, I had been on friendly terms. Or rather, he did not imagine it, but like an enemy invented an unbelievable fiction; for he knows very well that he has lied. I wish that, whoever he is, he were present here, so that I might put the question to him on the word of Truth itself (for whatever we say as in the presence of God, we Christians regard as an oath). I would ask him this: which of us rejoiced more in the welfare of the departed Constans? Who prayed for him more earnestly? The facts of the earlier charge prove it; indeed it is plain to everyone how the case stands. He himself knows very well that no one who felt as I did toward the departed Constans, and truly loved him, could be a friend to his enemy. Yet I fear that, having other feelings toward him than I had, he has falsely attributed to me the hatred that he himself felt.