Letter 2014: If I could speak as well as you are kind enough to believe, my Latin would be an unwelcome intrusion on Greek ears.

Bishop Avitus to the lord Sigismund. If I could speak as well as you are kind enough to believe, my Latin would be an unwelcome din upon Greek ears. But since in our own tongue they will find what is less polished to be the more intelligible, in the letters which you have ordered to be drafted through my fellow-servant, faults can be dictated without anxiety. As for what we wish to say, the recipients can certainly search it out through whatever interpreter they please. For my own part, in our accustomed converse I have come to know the worthiness of our most pious lord even more, if it can be said, than through tested experience with an interpreter. For the rest, may Christ repay you in turn for the constancy of the grace which you keep for your own particular servants. And this very thing is shown also in the case of this same young man whom you are sending: for while you consider in him your own advantage, yet in both respects there is a reward, since you have, as it were, reared a son for yourselves, and as it were, you give back to his father the one you reared.

Avitus episcopus domno Sigismundo. Si ita, ut dignamini credere, loqui possem, importune obstreperet Graecis auribus sermo Latinus. At cum in lingua nostra hoc magis habituri sint intellegibile, quod minus fuerit expolitum, in litteris, quas per conservum meum fieri praecepistis, pos- sunt vitia cum securitate dictari. Ipsi certe quid velimus dicere, quocumque scru- tentur interprete: ego in affatu consueto dignationem plus, si dici potest, quam piissimi domni experimento interpretante cognovi. De reliquo Christus vobis pro per- severantia gratiae, quam peculiaribus servis servatis, vicem rependat. Quod etiam in hoc ipso adulescente quem dirigitis tale monstratur, dum cogitantes in eo quidem commodum, sed in utroque mercedem quasi vobis nutristis filium et quasi patri red- ditis nutritum.