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| To Chrysogonus, a Monk of Aquileia.
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Letter IX. To Chrysogonus, a Monk of Aquileia.
A bantering letter to an indifferent correspondent. Of
the same date as the preceding.
Heliodorus,125
| 125 See introd. to Letter
XIV. | who is so dear to us
both, and who loves you with an affection no less deep than my own, may have given you a faithful
account of my feelings towards you; how your name is always on my lips,
and how in every conversation which I have with him I begin by
recalling my pleasant intercourse with you, and go on to marvel at your
lowliness, to extol your virtue, and to proclaim your holy love.
Lynxes, they say, when they look behind them, forget
what they have just seen, and lose all thought of what their eyes have
ceased to behold. And so it seems to be with you. For so entirely have
you forgotten our joint attachment that you have not merely blurred but
erased the writing of that epistle which, as the apostle tells us,126
is written in the hearts of Christians. The
creatures that I have mentioned lurk on branches of leafy trees and
pounce on fleet roes or frightened stags. In vain their victims fly,
for they carry their tormentors with them, and these rend their flesh
as they run. Lynxes, however, only hunt when an empty belly makes their
mouths dry. When they have satisfied their thirst for blood, and have
filled their stomachs with food, satiety induces forgetfulness, and
they bestow no thought on future prey till hunger recalls them to a
sense of their need.
Now in your case it cannot be that you have already had
enough of me. Why then do you bring to a premature close a friendship
which is but just begun? Why do you let slip what you have hardly as
yet fully grasped? But as such remissness as yours is never at a loss
for an excuse, you will perhaps declare that you had nothing to write.
Had this been so, you should still have written to inform me of the
fact.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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