“When I heard of you as winging your way from transalpine hills to your nest of sweetest quiet, a great repose shone suddenly forth upon my mind anxious on your account. My mind flew back, as from crashing storms, to a haven of placid peace. For love is wont to be joyful in prosperity and oppressed in adversity. Thus it is that the voice of the bride, bewailing the absence of the longed-for spouse, cries ‘I am wounded with love’.[253] For both are true: your love wounds, and it heals. One part of the wound inflicted by love remains an open sore, your longed-for face has not yet beamed upon the eyes of your lover. The anxiety of not knowing that you were well has been removed from my mind, but the hunger of the eyes is not yet appeased by the sight of your countenance. This Sorrow we trust may very soon be taken away, by the ministry of that grace which has deigned to remove the anxiety of mind by the arrival of your letters; and then he who desires both health and vision will be full of joy in the arrival of yourself. “You have written to me of the religious life and justness of the lord apostolic[254], what great and unjust trials he suffers at the hands of the children of discord. I confess that I glow with great joy that the father of the churches sets himself about the service of God with pious and faithful mind, without guile. No wonder that justice suffers persecution in his person at the hands of evil men, when in our Chief, the fount of all goodness and justice, the God Christ, justice suffered persecution even unto death.” After referring sympathetically to Arno’s complaints that his life has been a very unquiet one of late, by reason of much travelling, Alcuin continues:— “There is one journey upon which I wish that you would enter. Would that I could see you praying in the venerable temple of blessed Martin our protector, that thy supplication and ours might restore my strength, that by Christ’s mercy the pious consolation of love might advance us both on the way of perpetual beatitude. How this may come about, let your providence consider. If the opportunity of the present year does not grant to us our will, by reason of the hindrance of affairs, may we meet in quiet times and at a quiet season, after Easter of next year, at St. Amand[255]. The frequent infirmity of my poor little body would make a long journey very fatiguing to me in the storms of winter.” Arno could himself write a genial and affectionate letter. One of his letters to the Cuckoo[256] has been preserved:— [Sidenote: Ep. 287.] “_Kartula dic: Cuculus valeat per saecula nostra._ To the very dear bird the Cuckoo the Eagle sends greeting.