Letter 1108: The news that you're at Milan reached me by rumor before your letter arrived — fame lets nothing about prominent men...

Rumor, which suffers nothing to be unknown about distinguished men, had brought word that you were staying at Milan even before your own letter came. But what good does it do those who long for you, that, when you had been carried into the region nearest to us, you should refuse yourself? I bore your separation more equably when it was distant; for the hope of your presence, denied by a great interval, lay dormant. Now you stir up our expectation by the easiness of your nearness, and the intervention of the Alps cannot excuse you to your colleagues, since the road by which you have a worse case for pardon has become, for us, the juster ground for complaint. But a limit must be set to my grief. At least hereafter let your letters frequent Rome, more delightful than the honeycombs of Hybla or of Hymettus, the receiving of which delights me as the greatest interest, while the paying out wearies me. Farewell.