Letter 6020: The taste of blessings is unknown to those who live in prosperity.

The savor of good things is unknown in prosperity: scarcely is the quality of heavenly blessings recognized while they are held; after departure, what is sweet increases; we do not know the value of desire while its objects are in our hands. Truly I confess, as long as Ravenna had you, I believed it a sinister omen to imagine the things I now suffer, nor amid favorable circumstances, like some malicious interpreter of my own happiness, did I sigh over what could happen through your absence. I ought not to have recognized my own merits unless I were separated from a human being, nor to have understood that what flatters the sinner who pursues it is fugitive. But why does this epistolary composition exceed the limit of a chastened diction? Let him bring remedy to these things whose command all things obey. Yet I, on account of that for which pages were devised, am well in bodily substance, and through these duties, under God's protection, I await the announcement of your prosperity. Therefore receive my services, and if amid these matters which you have learned to conduct with me any favorable outcome has arrived, announce it without the obstacle of dissimulation.

XX. ENNODIVS FAVSTO. Ignoratur bonorum sapor in prosperis: uix dinoscitur superni qualitas bonorum, dum tenetur: post migrationem capita dulcescunt: desiderii pretia in manibus constituta nescimus. uere fateor, quamdiu Rauenna uos habuit, sinistrum omen credidi cogitare quae patior nec inter res secundas quasi malignus propriae felicitatis interpres quae per absentiam uestram euenire poterant suspiraui. non debui merita mea, si ab homine non. separarer, agnoscere nec intellegere fugitiuum esse quod sectanti peccata blanditur. sed quid epistolaris concinnatio castigatae terminum dictionis excedit? ferat his rebus medelam cuius XVIUI. 4 reuertitur b adiaratom T sed d ex b corr. uidetur 4- 5 cupi|is B d s. l. m. ree., enpidis b 8 ad (d in ras.) L 9 boneris B\'T, honoris В\'b 10 conditio BLTb 14 interim] itaram* Bb 16 incidis. L XX. 24 abstinentiam L1 26 Beotaodi Tl 28 eioedet B medellam B* imperio uniuersa famulantur. ego tamen, propter quod adtributae sunt paginae, ualeo substantia corporali et per haec munia sub dei ope, ut prosperitas uestra nuntietur, expecto. accipite ergo obsequia mea, et si quid inter haec, quae mecum geri didicistis, euentus dexter adtulerit, sine dissimulationis obstaculo nuntiate.