Letter 3025: After the feast, during which our hopes for the presence and safety of our lord were rightly fulfilled, I dispatched...

Bishop Avitus to the most illustrious gentleman Ruclo. After the feast, in which our prayers concerning the presence and well-being of our lord [the king] deservedly shone forth, now that the dutiful pages have been dispatched to him himself, by right the service of the present letter is offered also to you, the special intimates of my heart. Through it I make known that we, amid such great rumors of affairs as could occur, have passed Easter prosperously, in such a way that its fullness of the divine gift's benefits will accrue to me, if I shall also have deserved the honor of your address together with a like acknowledgment of your prosperity. The archdeacon Leonianus, your reverence's servant, to Sapaudus. Although you have described, with brilliant discourse, the pomp of the princely banquet, gleaming with the delicacies of the sea and of the land, it is customary that affection be displayed in all things. For you recite such things untroubled, after you have dispatched the material given to you not with verses but with teeth, when in a single luncheon, which scarcely two mules' backs had carried, a single belly enclosed it all, when, neglecting your uncombed hair, you combed with combs a belly congested by excess. Although it is plain that you have piled this up to mock me, I nevertheless steadfastly affirm that no one like myself, whether he go hungry or whether he eat, deserves to be called blessed. For, to converse about the first dish that you set forth, you supposed a small kind of punishment was inflicted, in that the peacock, enclosed in its devourable covering as a forcemeat, shuts out the appetite gaping toward the inner parts, and the gullet, recoiling with kindled throat, hung for some little delay of time under the judgment of the skilled carver. And so it came about that, drinking your food and ruminating your cups, you, hungering, occupied the first part of the luncheon with complaints, eating, its middle with plunderings, and sated, its last with tears. Nor would I say that what I lacked profited you: rather, for us, however little was left over to you, satisfied everyone. For when you, indulged most amid such great blessedness of the banquet and most slowly sated, can scarcely prove yourself happy, what would you judge concerning wretched me, I venture to ask, who am not permitted access to the abundance of the royal table and am not filled amid the frugality of the church; who, under the name of an honor consigned to custody, as though summoned to the first place and forestalled by a better man, am compelled to lie down lest I be able to flee; I am stuffed with vegetables and bloated with turnips, I abound in pulse, but such as the land, not the sea, has sent forth. Among these things, what manner of oysters those of good memory once were, I do not even recall. If some modest measure is set out in one tiny half-filled little vessel of pale wine, even this measure, this rule, is observed. Now I keep silent about the food: in obtaining fresh provisions the punishment is greater; demanding new wine, I either suffer it as medicine or am made out to have stolen something. With the utmost unseasonableness I bring it about that I presume upon three fresh portions more than the others do. The very bowls themselves, which I break by feigned mishaps, dwindle through daily replacement. Therefore cease only to mock the toil-worn: because, since it is the daily lot of each of us that whatever each has been allotted, then I shall be able to forget my household misery, if our lord should so bid me be present at his feast that it actually fall to me to be present.

Avitus episcopus viro illustrissimo Rucloni. Post festivitatem, in qua de praesentia vel incolumitate domni nostri vota nostra merito claruerunt, paginis ad ipsum officii destinatis iure vobis, peculiaribus pectoris mei, etiam praesentium litterarum famulatio offertur. Per quam nos inter tantos, ut fieri potnit, rerum rumores pascha prospere transegisse significo, sic mihi eius pleni- tudine divini muneris beneficiis proventura, si vestri quoque adloquii dignationem cum simili prosperitatis agnitione meruero. Leonianus archidiaconus v. s. Sapaudo. Licet pompam convivii principalis marinis deliciis terrestribusque fulgentem lucu- lento sermone descripseris, in cuncta declarari amorem consuetum est. Securus enim taliter recitas, postquam datam tibi materiam non versibus, sed dentibus expedisti, cum in uno prandio, quod vix duo burdonum terga detulerant, unus venter inclusit, cum inpexum neglegens crinem alvum nimietate concretam pectinibus pexuisti. Quod licet ad insultandum mihi exaggerasse te pateat, ego tamen constanter affirmo nullum similem nostri, sive esuriat ille seu comedat, beatum merito nuncupari. Nam ut de primo, quod exposuisti, ferculo colloquamur, parvum tibi poenae genus putabas afflictum, quod appetitum interioribus inhiantem devorabili tegmine pavus isicio con- clusus excludit et repedans accensis faucibus gula aliquantula temporis mora sub docti incisoris pependit arbitrio. Sicque factum est, ut bibendo cibos, pocula ruminando, primam prandii partem esuriens querelis, medietatem comedens rapinis, ultimam satur lacrimis occupatione nec tibi dixerim profuisse, quod defui: vel nobis, quantulum- eumque tibi superfuit, omnibus satisfecit. Nam cum tu in tanta convivii beatitudine deliciatus maxime, tardissime satiatus vix te possis probare felicem: quid de me misero censeas, interrogare praesumo, qui ad regalis mensae abundantiam non permittor et in ecclesiasticae frugalitate non saturor; qui sub honoris nomine custodiae mancipatus, quasi ad primam vocatus et a meliore praeventus, ne possim fugere, iacere com- pellor; impleor oleribus et inflor napis, abundo leguminibus, sed quae tellus, non pontus emisit. Inter haec qualia fuerint bonae memoriae quondam ostrea, nec recordor. Si modicum quid vasculo uno minimo semipleno vini pallentis apponitur, et hic modus vel regula custoditur. Iam de cibis taceo: in accipiendis recentibus maior est poena; musta deposcens aut medicina patior aut aliquid rapuisse confingor. Summa inoppor- tunitate perago, ut tres recentes aliis plus praesumam. Ipsae etiam paterae, quas confictis casibus frango, cotidiana reparatione decrescunt. Quapropter laboriosis tan- tum insultare desiste: quia, cum utrique nostrum cotidianum fatum sit, quod quisque sortitus est, tum familiaris miseriae oblivisci potero, si epulo suo domnus noster sic adesse me iubeat, ut adesse contingat.