Letter 3023: Having dispatched my service of a letter to our common lord, I also pay the respects always owed to your dear...

Bishop Avitus to the most illustrious gentleman Ceretius. Having dispatched the service of a letter to our common lord, I also pay to your loftiness, dear to me, the respects that are always owed: advising you, or rather, since you have grown so hardened, begging you that you may at last wear down your stomachs, sick from the many delicacies of the Saone, with the more sparing fasts of your own Isere. But if you so little know how to repay longing in kind that your own absence does not yet seem to you to suffice, then, compelled by the wrong, I make this wish and avenge myself by means of the bearer of this imprecation: that the turns of presence be reversed, and that what Vienne has in abundance Chalon may obtain. Here we have nothing that ought to be sought after; let us send there what one may be glad to shun. And since the thing I speak of is on the road, now then: if you are still being detained in your place, receive him; if you are already arranging to return, pass him by.

Avitus episcopus viro illustrissimo Ceretio. Ad domnum communem litterarum servitio destinato etiam dilectae mihi sublimi- tati vestrae officia semper debenda persolvo: suadens, immo. quia tantum obduruistis, supplicans, ut stomachos multis Sauconnae deliciis nauseantes tandem parcioribus Iaeriae vestrae ieiuniis atteratis. Quodsi adeo nescitis desiderio vicissitudinem repen- sare, ut nondum vobis videatur absentia vestra sufficere, iniuria coactus hoc opto meque baiulo huius imprecationis ulciscor: ut mutentur praesentiae vices, quod Vienna abundat, Cabillonus obtineat. Hic non habemus, quod debeat expeti: illuc mittamus, quod libeat declinari. Et quia, quod dico, in via est, iam, si adhuc in loco retardatis, excipite, si iam redire disponitis, praeterite.