If the barrier of times and regions does not allow our devotion, by which we serve you in spirit, to be presented also in bodily form, yet what we hold in our prayers we attempt to put forth by our services. For we believe that we are admitted before the sacred gaze of your glory as often as we offer the debt of our solicitude by the zeal of a serving page.
For although your prosperity cannot be hidden from the world, and lights up its globe with the rays of a clear splendor, yet it is sweet if those whom you raise up with the fasces of military office and with the affection of a special grace, those whom in the farthest parts of the earth you enlarge with the fellowship of your powerful court and with a venerable participation in the Roman name, may in particular come to know the joys of your perpetuity, which fame celebrates for all in general. For the remoteness of your subjects adorns the greatness of your empire, and the fact that we are possessed at a distance testifies to the wide extent of your commonwealth. Wherefore graciously receive the bearer with kindness. And although, for all who seek it, it may suffice for the summit of honor if they are deemed worthy to behold you;
yet let them also commend us, whom we have presumed to recommend. And judging that the persons of these dear and intimate friends will profit us too through this exchange of intercourse, with a swift shortcut of longing we hasten to meet you in those whom we send. Above all beseeching this: that since the graciousness of your Highness cannot forget its own benefits, in return for the thanksgiving which we render, we may as soon as possible be found worthy of a reply from your most serene lips.