What you have done is doubly full of piety, when, by coming to Lyons and by sending here, you took pains concerning two brothers: to seek out the sick one there, to visit the anxious one here. Nor will it be thought that the purpose was interrupted by you, since you turned to this spiritual office for a religious brother, to whom more is owed in affection and honor, even if the sick man had not asked it — for by the right of a brother-priest the very novelty of the situation would seek at least an exhortation, even if the anxiety had no need of consolation. Therefore cease altogether to excuse the labor undertaken with just weariness, lest you seem to have sinned by any hesitation in undertaking or in defining this.
But now, as to how I may give worthy thanks for the gift you have sent, I feel I can find them in prayers rather than in letters. And in that you say such things can be produced from the desert, by a certain elegance you draw men's desires toward the place of your dwelling — which, without doubt, by the solicitude, discipline, and teaching of your person, even were it found to be a desert, would become a paradise. Wherefore, in return for the seat you have sent, invoking upon you a chair in exchange, I beg that with spiritual consolation and priestly instruction you would cherish the tottering school of our common dear Eugendus — no small matter, as regards its state, now widowed of its prelate. Nor let this hold you back from the charity to be expended [Al. lect.,
let it not draw you back] that the care of your ordinance is sought by them, as I judge, less worthily — yet out of a spirit of simplicity rather than of abuse: so that, being advanced (God granting, as we desire) to greater helms of governance, and rising to double the five talents by two more added, being faithful ones proven in the second degree, you may bear this, with the consciousness of the secret, to the peoples, as your greatest [charge] — so that, where in others brotherly dissension could have made a desert, in you fatherly love may strive to hold together a monastery.