Through certain clerics of an alien law I received a divine gift in the tidings of your safety: nor did the quality of the bearers diminish the grace of the loving giver; just as neither did the food sent from heaven to our Elijah (1 Kings XVII, 6) grow cheap amid the horrid beaks of the flying carriers. Yet the very sweetness of your letters, which I took up eagerly enough, that harshness of some little bitterness besprinkled, whereby you deny that the writings which I sent you before have reached you. For through the major-domo of Tullius, who, sent by his father on an embassy to your love, my lord Sigismund, had found me again in the city of the Viennese, I rejoiced that I had received your letters;
through him again I discharged the offices of a most lavish charity, and cultivated the affection for you which I had conceived in my heart with the zeal of a serving page. By what mishap it was not brought into your hands, the major-domo whom I mentioned above cannot be ignorant of. And I indeed took it ill, and rejoiced that it had been troublesome to you, that in so fitting an opportunity the exchange of one office had perished for the desires of two men. Nevertheless, since concerning the settled purpose of our love the alternate part is secure, it must sometimes be pardoned to those mischances by which, frustrating our conversations rather than our vows, loss can befall our solicitude, but not our love.
Nor should you think, whether occasions be denied or found, that there is any time for negligence, wherein with me, amid whatsoever other doings, the frequent ambition of caring for your welfare should grow lukewarm. That, therefore, I judge to be more precious in the minds of friends, wherein it is established that chance is permitted nothing—which neither the length of the journey scatters, nor the abuse of forgetfulness frustrates. Yet at present I make recompense with a word of charity, if for the loss you have deigned to reckon my silence. And at the same time, and more particularly, I commend to you—if you deign—a youth, namely the son of the illustrious man Celer, who after God, that his only offspring may begin to hope for life, you shall bring to pass.
For he is so bound by the tearful infirmity of his child that, uncertain what to wish, he is forced as a father to see death threatening, and compelled as one bereaved to bewail the life. Wherefore join your skill—which we judge to be singular—to the Divinity that shall bring aid: for you to have promised is already in part to have done. May Christ grant that, by exulting and by praising the more earnestly in this your masterly care, both Italy may owe to you the repute of medicine, and Gaul the health of the boy.