On another occasion Gregory writes to Leander, sending him the pallium, "blessed by Peter, prince of the Apostles," only to be used at Mass: "I see by your letter that burning charity which kindles others. He who is not himself on fire cannot inflame others. I always call to mind your life with great veneration. But as for me I am not what I was: 'Call me not Noemi, which is fair; call me Mara, for I am full of bitterness'. Following the way of my Head, I had resolved to be the scorn of men, the outcast of the people. But the burden of this honour weighs me down; innumerable cares pierce me like swords. There is no rest of the heart. I was tranquil in my monastery. The tempest arose; I am in its waves, suffering with the loss of quiet a shipwreck of mind. The gout oppresses you; I also am terribly pained by it. It will be well if, under these strokes of the scourge, we perceive them to be gifts, by which the sense of the flesh may atone for sins which delights of the flesh may have led us to commit. "The shortness of my letter will show how weak and how occupied I am, who say so little to one whom I love so much."[205] St. Gregory tells us that king Rechared, after the martyrdom of his brother St. Hermenegild, was converted from the Arian heresy, and brought the whole Visigothic nation to the Catholic faith. "The brother of a martyr fitly became a preacher of the faith. If Hermenegild had not died a martyr, this he would not have been able to do; for 'except the grain of wheat falling into the ground dieth, itself remaineth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit'. This we see to be doing in the members which we know to have been done in the Head. In the nation of the Visigoths one died that many might live."[206] A letter of St. Gregory to this king Rechared is extant, which one of the greatest French bishops, Hincmar of Reims, nearly three hundred years after it was written, thought worthy to be sent as a present to the emperor Charles the Bald. I quote portions of it:[207]