Letter 1024: Avitus, bishop, to the most excellent Lord Sigismund.

Bishop Avitus to lord Sigismund. Recently, when I had dispatched the dutiful homage always owed to your eminence, according to the custom of the apostolic festival, you replied in a discourse no less precious in its courtesy than conspicuous in its eloquence, saying that you had sent your answer rather late for this reason: that my humility, being conscious of itself (which by right restrains itself from the boldness of writing), might pay the penalties of its parched condition all the longer, in proportion as I thirsted more for the splendid fountain of your conversation. It would be a kind of vengeance, as you deign to write, that the courier whom I had dispatched too sluggishly should tarry the longer in your company. O recompense of a most delightful retribution! O sentence of a cruelty to be wished for! Who indeed could endure so intolerable a punishment with equanimity, that, shut up in the paradise of your presence, he should behold you with a more blessed delay? I plainly fear that you may bid me write frequently, if you intend to avenge tardiness in such a manner. Or if I were certain that I should be chastised with a punishment of this kind, I myself would without doubt offer up writings which I had penned more rarely than was right. And would that, while placed with you, the swiftness of returning were denied me: that the words which I might be allowed to read for a long time, I might the longer be granted to hear from the very pathway of their utterance. Surely God will see what I deserve before your judgment, whether by the boldness of my service or by my trepidation: yet I shall be guilty toward the couriers of my office, if I defraud them, by the amendment of the very fault of which you accuse me, of the length of your presence.

Avitus episcopus domno Sigismundo. Nuper cum officia culmini vestro semper debita pro apostolicae festivitatis con- suetudine destinavi, non minus civilitate pretioso quam declamatione conspicuo sermone dixistis idcirco vos tardius dedisse rescriptum, ut humilitas sui conscia, quae a scri- bendi audacia iure temperat, eo diutius ariditatis supplicia penderet, quo fontem splen- didum vestri alloquii plus sitirem. Vindictae, sicut dignamini scribere, genus esset, ut portitor a me segnius destinatus vobiscum diutius moraretur. O retributio ultionis blandissimae! o sententia crudelitatis optandae! Quis scilicet tam intolerabilem poenam aequanimiter ferat, ut paradiso vestri conspectus inclusus mora beatiore vos videat? Timeo plane, ne frequenter me iubeatis scribere, si disponitis tarditatem taliter vindi- care. Aut si ego certus forem huiusmodi me animadversione plectendum, ipse procul dubio scripta porrigerem, quae iusto rarius exarassem. Et utinam mihi vobiscum posito negaretur celeritas revertendi: verba quae longum tempus sinerer legere, diutius ex ipso meatus tramite donarer audire. Certe deus viderit, quid ego apud iudicium vestrum vel audacia servitii vel trepidatione promerear: tamen officii mei portitoribus reus ero, si eos prolixitate praesentiae vestrae delicti, quo arguitis, emendatione frau- davero.