Letter 134

134. To Paeonius the Presbyter

How greatly you gladdened us by your letter you can surely judge by the very things you wrote; so clearly was the purity of the heart, from which those words came forth, declared out of the letter. For as the channel of water shows its own spring, so the nature of speech marks the heart that produced it. So I confess I have felt something strange and far removed from what one would expect. For though I was always eager to come upon a letter from your Perfection, yet when I took the letter in my hands and read it, I was not so much pleased by what was written as grieved, reckoning how great a loss we had suffered during the time of silence.

But since you have begun to write, do not cease to do so. For you will gladden me more than those who send great riches to lovers of wealth. None of my scribes was at hand, neither of the fine penmen nor of the shorthand-writers. For of those whom I had happened to train, some have run back to their first way of life, and others have given up under the toil, worn out by long sickness.