Letter 1022: Recently, when I sent the usual service owed to your eminence on the occasion of the apostolic feast, you said — in...

Recently, when I sent the duties always owed to your eminence in accordance with the custom of the apostolic feast, you said—in speech no less precious for its courtesy than conspicuous for its eloquence—that you had given your reply more slowly for this very reason: so that my humility, conscious of itself, which rightly restrains itself from the boldness of writing, might pay the penalties of dryness the longer, the more I thirsted for the splendid fountain of your discourse. The kind of vengeance, as you deign to write, would be that the messenger dispatched by me too sluggishly should linger longer with you. O recompense of a most charming retribution! O sentence of a cruelty to be longed for! For who, indeed, would bear so intolerable a penalty with an even mind, that, enclosed in the paradise of your presence, he should behold you in a more blessed delay? I plainly fear that you may bid me write often, if you intend to punish tardiness in such a fashion. Or, if I were certain that I should be chastised with a penalty of this kind, I myself would without doubt hand over writings that I had penned more rarely than was fitting. And would that, once I had been placed in your company, swiftness of returning were denied me: that the words I should be permitted to read over a long time, I might be granted to hear at greater length from the very path of the journey itself. Surely God will see what I deserve before your judgment, whether by the boldness of my service or by my trembling: yet I shall stand guilty before the bearers of my service, if I defraud them, by amends for the very offense of which you accuse me, of the prolonged enjoyment of your presence.