from his functions as Archbishop of Rheims, Gerbert wrote to the abbot and brethren of the monastery of St.Geraud, where he had been brought up, "And now farewell to your holy community; farewell to those whom I knew in old times, or who were connected with me by blood, if there still survive any whose names, if not their features, have remained upon my memory.

Not that I have forgotten them through pride; but I am broken down, and--if it must be said--changed by the ferocity of barbarians; what I learned in my boyhood I forgot in my youth; what I desired in my youth, I despised in my old age.

Such are the fruits thou hast borne for me, O pleasure! Such are the joys afforded by the honors of the world! Believe my experience of it: the higher the great are outwardly raised by glory, the more cruel is their inward anguish!" Length of life brings, in the soul of the ambitious, days of hearty undeception; but it does not discourage them from their course of ambition.

Gerbert was, amongst the ambitious, at the same time one of the most exalted in point of intellect and one of the most persistent as well as restless in attachment to the affairs of the world..