ts.

2 Again, those are excused from these offices who are absent in the
service of the state; and a person already guardian or curator who has
to absent himself on public business is excused from acting in either of
these capacities during such absence, a curator being appointed to act
temporarily in his stead. On his return, he has to resume the burden
of tutelage, without being entitled to claim a year's exemption, as has
been settled since the opinion of Papinian was delivered in the fifth
book of his replies; for the year's exemption or vacation belongs only
to such as are called to a new tutelage.

3 By a rescript of the Emperor Marcus persons holding any magistracy may
plead this as a ground of exemption, though it will not enable them to
resign an office of this kind already entered upon.

4 No guardian or curator can excuse himself on the ground of an action
pending between himself and his ward, unless it relates to the latter's
whole estate or to an inheritance.

5 Again, a man who is already guardian or curator to three persons
without having sought after the office is entitled to exemption from
further burdens of the kind so long as he is actually engaged with
these, provided that the joint guardianship of several pupils, or
administration of an undivided estate, as where the wards are brothers,
is reckoned as one only.

6 If a man can prove that through poverty he is unequal to the burden of
the office, this, according to rescripts of the imperial brothers and of
the Emperor Marcus, is a valid ground of excuse.

7 Illhealth again is a sufficient excuse if it be such as to prevent a
man from attending to even his own affairs:

8 and the Emperor Pius decided by a rescript that persons unable to read
ought to be excused, though even these are not incapable of transacting
business.

9 A man too is at once excused if he can show that a father has
appointed him testamentary guardian out of enmity, while conversely no
one can in any case claim exemption who promised the ward's father that
he would act as guardian to them:

10 and it was settled by a rescript of M. Aurelius and L. Verus that the
allegation that one was unacquainted with the pupil's father cannot be
admitted as a ground of excuse.

11 Enmity against the ward's father, if extremely bitter, and if there
was no reconciliation, is usually accepted as a reason for exemption
from the office of guardian;

12 and similarly a person can claim t