It may well be doubted, especially in view of his later experience, whether a residence at Paris or at any other university during just these years of probation would have been more profitable to Erasmus than his life at Steyn. He had been learning the invaluable lesson of self-education, and all his life was to be the richer for it. No doubt he was beginning to be restless under restraint, and thinking, as any monk had a perfect right to do, of how he might widen his opportunity.

He says, we remember, that there was no way out of the monastic life except to become the head of a nunnery, a remark so obviously foolish that it is worth recalling only to notice how completely his own experience contradicted it.

The Bishop of Cambrai, planning to go to Italy, wanted a young scholar of good parts to help him out with his necessary Latin. He had heard of Erasmus, how we do not know, and invited him to join his court and make the Italian journey with him. This may well have seemed to the young man a glorious opportunity. Italy was then, even more than it has ever been since, the goal toward which every ambitious youth of scholarly taste naturally turned. Doubtless, also, in the larger liberty (or bondage) of the great world, his monastic experience seemed narrow and sordid enough. He calls the Bishop his god ?p? ??a???. "Had it not been for this deliverance his distinguished talent would have rotted in idleness, in luxury and in revelling." Evidently he would have had no reason to dread the severity of discipline for which he fancied his health was too delicate. The Bishop made sure of his prize by securing the approval of the Bishop of Utrecht, in whose diocese the monastery lay, and also of the prior and the general of the order. The excellent prior himself had long been convinced that Erasmus and the monastery were unsuited to each other and had recommended him to take some such opportunity as now offered.[25] This was the kind of especially unreasoning beast whom Erasmus says the monks were wont to choose for their tyrant!

The relation into which Erasmus now entered with the Bishop of Cambrai was one of the most agreeable that could present itself to a young scholar. It demanded of him but small services, and those of a kind most attractive to him, and yet it gave him a sense of usefulness which saved his self-respect. As a member of the Bishop's household his living was provided for, and leisure was secured for the studies toward which he was now eagerly looking forward. Once for all we have to bear in mind in studying the life of a scholar, that pure scholarship is never, and never has been, self-supporting. The only question has been how to provide for its maintenance in ways least dangerous to its integrity and least offensive to its own sense of dignity. In our day we are familiar with endowments by which the earlier stages of the scholar's life are made accessible to talent without wealth, but in its later stages scholarship is held to a pretty strict account and is expected to give a very tangible quid pro quo for all it receives.

In Erasmus' time this dependence of learning upon endowment was more frankly acknowledged, and might be indefinitely prolonged. Undoubtedly the easiest form of such dependence was the monastic. There is no doubt that Erasmus' de contemptu mundi gives a perfectly fair ideal picture of the normal monastic liberty and its suitableness for the scholar, but for him this life had also its dangers and its limitations. Next to the endowment through the monastery there was provision by private patronage. It had come to be more than ever before in Europe, the duty and the pride of all princes, lay and clerical, to devote some part of the revenue which came from their people to promoting their higher intellectual interests. Scholars were thought of as a decoration as indispensable to the well equipped princely court as was the court jester or the private religious counsellor.

With the progress of a new classic culture, all public documents were taking on a higher tone and demanded a more highly trained body of scholars for their preparation. But such a position might become laborious, too mechanical and professional for men of real genius. Then there was the alternative of teaching, either privately in the employ of some rich family, or publicly at a university. In Erasmus' time we find traces of university freedom, but they were not significant of the normal condition of things. The university was a great corporation with a reputation to keep up, and compelled to preserve at least a decent uniformity in its instruction. A man of independent genius could hardly have found himself entirely at his ease there, even if he were able to win one of the endowments by which to live. We shall see that Erasmus was not attracted by the university career, and only resorted to the method of private tutoring when other resources failed.

Another form of endowment of scholarship was through the application of church foundations to this purpose. Of course this was in a sense a perversion of trusts, but there were many excuses for it. For one thing, the ends of religion and of education have always, under Christianity, been largely identified. Even in our own country, and down to the present moment, endowments for education have been almost primarily thought of as made in the service of religion. The prime function of Christian scholarship has been the maintenance of the religious tradition. So that, when a man was given a "living" out of church funds, it was felt that he might properly make use of this income to carry on his personal studies. Especially if, as a result of those studies, he produced works of religious edification, the purpose of the endowment was not thought to be violated. Furthermore, if with this endowment there were connected distinct duties involving the "cure of souls," no one was shocked if the scholarly holder of the "living" hired a lesser talent with a small percentage of the income to perform these duties, while he himself devoted his leisure to the higher studies for which he was fitted. Such a living may fairly be compared to a university scholarship in our day—as in fact the majority of our American scholarships will be found to have a religious origin.

It must have required an unusual sense of the fitness of things for a man of Erasmus' time to decline so easy and so honourable a means of subsistence. What his own real views on the subject were we shall have occasion to see later when the temptation comes to him. Enough to say here that, at least so far as the cure of souls was concerned, it seemed to him, in his better moments, a scandal that the man who did the work of a "living" should not receive at least a large part of its emoluments. Doubtless, also, the sense of confinement, always an unbearable one to Erasmus, had its part in making a church benefice unacceptable to him. Another consideration no doubt had its weight. The mediÆval scholar had served the cause of religion by agreeing in every detail with its traditions as the organised church handed them to him. The scholar of the Renaissance, though he might be equally devoted to the religious system, thought of his learning as something having an independent right to existence, and might well hesitate to commit himself to such obligations toward the traditional views of religion as were implied in the holding of a clerical office.

Distinctly the most agreeable form of support for the scholar of the early Renaissance was a regular pension from some rich patron. He had no need to feel himself humbled by this relation, for he could always fall back on the pleasant reflection that he was giving back to his patron in honour quite as much as he received from him in money. In fact, this was the very essence of such patronage. The relation was quite different from that of the public official, clerk, secretary, or what not, hired to perform a definite kind of service. It was a relation of honour, not to be reduced to commercial terms. The money given was not paid for the scholar's services; it was given to secure him the leisure needed for the proper pursuit of his own scholarly aims. It bound him only to diligence in pure scholarship, not to a servile flattery of his patron, nor to any direct furtherance of the patron's ends.

Plainly this system was open to abuses; but so is every relation of honour between men, and even the more exposed to abuse in proportion as it calls upon the principle of honour and not upon that of commercial equivalents. The quid pro quo is the scholar's devotion to the highest aims of scholarship, and if he fulfils his part to the best of his ability he may hold up his head in the presence of any man, even in an age of exclusively commercial standards.

All these forms of support were at one time or another employed by Erasmus. He seems to have disliked teaching, both public and private, though the evidence points towards his success, at least in the latter kind. The cure of souls he never undertook, but was willing to accept livings, if he were permitted to resign them for a handsome percentage as pension. Excepting with the bishop of Cambrai he never stood to any patron in the relation of secretary, clerk, librarian, or in any other similar form of service. His choice was a good liberal pension, and as to the quid pro quo, there was never in his case any room for doubt.

Whatever else Erasmus was, he certainly was not lazy. The impulse to produce was in him an irresistible one. All he asked was opportunity, and the several patrons who, from time to time, contributed to his support must have felt that on his side the point of honour was fully met. One other consideration will perhaps help us to understand the exact feeling of Erasmus in entering upon what seems to us, perhaps, a condition of personal dependence. How, we may ask, could any man have that confidence in his own talent which would assure him against the dread that after all he might prove a bad investment? The answer is twofold: the man must have a profound confidence either in the greatness of the cause he stands for or in his own surpassing merit. In Erasmus both these elements of assurance were united. He always thought and spoke of pure scholarship, when applied to the advancement of a pure Christianity, as the noblest occupation of man, and he shared in a high degree that exaggerated sense of personal importance which is the especial mark of the Renaissance scholar.

The acceptance of a pension from a private person was, then, the most untrammelled form of financial dependence which a poor scholar could assume, and it is the form chosen by Erasmus whenever he had an opportunity of choice. His first relation to the bishop of Cambrai was, indeed, intended to be one of actual, definite service. He was to go with him to Italy as his Latin secretary, and might well feel that he was to give a fair equivalent for his support. The journey to Italy, however, was indefinitely postponed. Erasmus says the bishop could not afford it. Meanwhile the young scholar lived at the episcopal court until, as the Italian plan seemed to be abandoned, the bishop gave him money enough to get to Paris. He promised a regular pension, but it was not forthcoming: "such is the way of princes."[26]

As to further detail of the life of Erasmus with the bishop we are quite in the dark. Even how long he was there is not clear and is cheerfully disregarded by most recent writers. It would probably be safe to conclude with Drummond that it was not more than about two years and that Erasmus' residence at Paris, therefore, began about 1491 or 1492, when he was about twenty-five years of age. As he had up to this time consistently complained of every situation in which he had found himself, we shall be quite prepared to find him making the worst possible of a manner of life which at the best cannot have been too attractive to a lover of ease and comfort.

The organisation of the University was such that the instruction was largely separate from the detail of discipline and maintenance of the student. Each student lived as he could, sought the teaching of such masters as suited his immediate purpose, and presented himself for academic honours whenever he was ready. A student of means lodged at his own cost in a private house or private Hall, and lived subject only to the general discipline of the University and the town. For poor students there existed, as in England, "colleges"—i. e., primarily lodging- and boarding-houses under a stricter oversight. These colleges were not primarily intended to provide instruction, a function which was only gradually assumed by them as their endowments grew to be larger than were needed to provide the ordinary necessities of living. Their teachers were rather tutors or "coaches" than men of independent scholarship; their function was to supplement by repetition and personal attention the public teaching of the more eminent university professors.

The CollÉge Montaigu, into which Erasmus entered, was a foundation of some antiquity, but during the previous generation had fallen into complete decay, so that nothing was left of it but the buildings. About 1480 it had taken a new lease of life under one John Standonch,[27] who devoted himself to its service. As master of the college he could make something by teaching, and gradually, through his own activity and that of his fellows, had got together enough so that he could give lodging and partial board to a certain number of poor students. By the year 1493 he was thus partially maintaining over eighty. The rest of their support they got as they could, by begging or otherwise.

Erasmus was, then, a charity boarder and ought, in all reason, to have been grateful for even this poor opportunity of enjoying the privileges toward which he had for years been looking forward as the summit of his hopes. Yet he can nowhere mention these Parisian days without the most doleful complaints of his sufferings from foul air, bad food, and severe discipline. The most famous of these diatribes occurs in the Colloquy called ?????fa??a—"The Eating of Fish." Erasmus' theme is here the excessive devotion to formal rules and observances in religion to the sacrifice of more important things. The eating of fish is only a text on which he hangs extremely bold and acute criticism of would-be religious persons, who for their lives would not violate the rules of the Church against the eating of meat, but were ready on the other hand to run into any excesses of fleshly dissipation. The speakers are a butcher and a salt-fishmonger. After they have gone on matching stories for a long time, the fishmonger suddenly breaks out:

So Erasmus goes on to tell other details of student-life at Montaigu. In the depths of winter a bit of bread was given out for food and they were obliged to draw water from a polluted well. Some of the sleeping-rooms were on the ground-floor and in such close neighbourhood to the common resort that anyone who lived there was sure to get his death or a dangerous illness. Frightful beatings were inflicted even on the innocent, "in order, as they say, to take the ferocity out of them,—for so they call a noble spirit,—and break it down on purpose to make them fit for monasteries. How many rotten eggs were devoured there! What a quantity of foul wine was drunk!"

And then, having made his fishmonger say all the vile things about Montaigu that he can think of, Erasmus, true to his nature, begins to hedge. Perhaps these things have been corrected since, but this is too late for those who are dead or are carrying about the seeds of disease in their bodies. Nor does he say all this from any ill-will to the college, but only to warn against the corruption of youth through the cruelty of man under the disguise of religion. He protests that if he could see good results from the monastic life he would urge everyone to take the cowl. In fact, however, he seldom goes into a Carthusian house without finding there someone who is either gone silly or is a regular madman. There can be no doubt that the rules for the CollÉge Montaigu published by Master Standonch in 1501 were sufficiently harsh. They were so made in order to check the abuse of too great freedom for the very young boys admitted to such foundations. In confirmation of Erasmus' picture of the horrors of Montaigu we find regularly quoted Rabelais' famous passage[29] in which the youth Gargantua on his return from Paris combs cannon-balls out of his hair and thus gives occasion to his father and tutor for an attack upon this same "college of vermin" as the haunt of cruelty and wretchedness. When Rabelais wrote this passage he had not yet been at Paris. It is practically certain that he was acquainted with the writings of Erasmus, and the conclusion seems obvious that he borrowed his illustration directly from the Ichthyophagia.

This description of "Vinegar College" has been almost universally taken as a serious account of Erasmus' own experience in Paris, and probably it has its foundation of truth. The commonest laws of sanitary decency are a thing almost of our own day, and not much more can be said of the principles of proper food and care of the body. No one could expect much from a charity-school in the fifteenth century. But these stories must be considered in their context. They are introduced, not as actual autobiography, but as illustrations of one of Erasmus' favourite themes, the evils of monasticism, and especially they are made to bear on an idea which seems to have been almost an idÉe fixe with him,—that all the powers of religion and learning were in league to drive young men into monasteries. As before in his recollections of Deventer and Steyn, so now here in his memories of the CollÉge Montaigu, this spectre still, after thirty years, haunts his imagination. He forgets that he was enjoying the fruits of the devotion and self-sacrifice of the founders and interprets all their actions by this same governing motive. He had called his schools "seminaria" for monks; now he calls his Paris college a "plantarium" for the same kind of a crop.

In fact, these early studies at the University were full of profit to Erasmus. He was at the centre of the best culture of the earlier time and the reviving spirit of the new classic learning was beginning to make itself felt. In his references to this experience it suited his purpose and his disposition always to throw contempt upon his teachers and upon all learning except that which seemed to him to reflect the glory of antiquity. Indeed, if he had been forced to content himself with the dry quibbling of the "Scotist" theologians who were still the dominant party at Paris, he would have found himself in dreary company enough. But we find no reason to think that there was any compulsion upon him to take any teaching he did not like. Greek had already begun to make its way as an attainable subject at Paris, and Erasmus was beginning to feel the charm which this, the choicest vehicle of human expression, was to exercise upon his whole life.

His first Paris residence was interrupted by illness, in consequence of which he returned for a time to the bishop of Cambrai. The bishop seems to have been willing to keep him indefinitely at his court, but not to have provided for his further maintenance elsewhere. With restored health Erasmus was back again at Paris and now, for the first time, on a really independent footing. For the moment he ceased to consider the question of patronage and began to give lessons to private pupils. Beatus, unquestionably prompted by Erasmus in all details, says that "the Englishmen at the university could find no one among the professors of liberal study in the whole place who was able to teach more learnedly or accustomed to teach more conscientiously." And then he goes on to make a comparison between this youth and the two best-known professors of literature at the time in Paris. One of these, Faustus Andrelinus, was evidently a type of the gay, reckless spirits who found in classic study an enjoyment purely intellectual and who used its moral standard as an excuse for all looseness of life. His manner of teaching was "popular" to the point of flippancy, designed rather to catch the applause of the crowd than to merit the approval of the learned. It is to Erasmus' credit that he did not allow his classic enthusiasm to carry away his judgment of this person. The other teacher, Gaguinus, was a more serious scholar, but not so far advanced and not yet regularly teaching publicly.

So it appears that, in spite of his doleful stories, our scholar had as usual been making the most of his time, and we come now happily to a point where evident facts and the testimony of other men can be made use of to show his growing value and power. There seems little reason to doubt that he was now a distinctly popular figure in academic circles. He was in steady demand as a private tutor for young men who could afford to pay well for his services. Among such youths Englishmen, then as ever since, were naturally most prominent, and it is through this relation to English pupils at Paris that the way was opened for Erasmus to many of the most interesting and important connections of his later life.

During this second Paris residence, Erasmus evidently got into some rather serious scrape, of which we get only vague suggestions in his correspondence. What it was and precisely the nature of the charges it brought upon him we cannot say. It seems to have had some connection with his relation to a mysterious personage, who has been supposed to be almost every possible person from the bishop of Cambrai down. Froude, in his hit-or-miss fashion, suggests that this person, whom Erasmus always refers to as senex ille, was the aged Marquis of Veere in Holland, son of a bastard of Duke Philip of Burgundy. Unfortunately for this theory, the Marquis of Veere was already dead and is of interest to Erasmus only on account of his charming widow, who at about this time begins to dawn on his horizon as a possible patroness. Beatus tells us with a word that Erasmus after his Montaigu experience went over (emigravit) to a certain noble Englishman who had with him two noble youths, of whom Beatus thinks Lord Mountjoy was one. This Mountjoy was certainly a pupil and afterward a faithful friend of Erasmus, and we have references to the "old man" in letters to Mountjoy which show plainly that the young nobleman was a confidant of the writer in the Paris unpleasantness, whatever that may have been. The same is also true of the other English youth whom Erasmus now met and learned to love, Thomas Grey, son of the Marquis of Dorset. An extract from a letter to him will give us an indication of how our scholar had got on in the art of vigorous expression. The letter[30] is dated at Paris, 1497 (?), and was evidently written soon after the trouble of which the old man is the alleged cause. It begins with extravagant expressions of affection for Grey. "Of the whole race of men none is dearer to me than you." He would have written him earlier, but dreaded to open up again the wound which he was just hoping would begin to heal.

This is about one half of the letter. It is evident that Erasmus was in good training for the choicest specimens of personal abuse which he was later to produce. The remainder of the letter is filled with flattery of young Grey laid on with as liberal a hand as was the abuse of the unfortunate "old man." The burden of this part of the letter is to console Grey for being still under the power of his tormentor, and to urge him to new effort and to self-reliance in his studies. Out of the confusion of vague references and later surmises as to who this unpleasant being was, one can get a certain unity and form such conjecture as one will. It seems probable that he was some Englishman of mature years and of good family who had been sent over to Paris as a guardian for the two young noblemen, Mountjoy and Grey; that he had engaged Erasmus as tutor, to live at their lodgings and to include himself in his instruction; that some cause, perhaps some looseness of morals on Erasmus' part, had brought them to a quarrel, in consequence of which Erasmus was forced to throw up his engagement. On the other hand, it is clear that no father would have intrusted his son to such a monster of physical and moral deformity as is here described. Just what Erasmus means by saying that "Gothia" was responsible for him I cannot make out. The whole episode is interesting only as throwing light on the development of our scholar in his style and his character.

That Erasmus, eager and diligent student as he surely was, did not entirely escape the allurements of the Latin Quarter is plain from later references of his own. Probably he is referring to some such experiences in a letter[31] written about this time to the friend whom Mr. Froude jauntily calls William Gauden, and who is the same William Hermann of Gouda to whom we have already alluded. This William had evidently written him a reproachful letter, but we do not learn clearly the grounds of his reproof. Erasmus ascribes his irritation to the tattling of some enemy and beseeches him at great length to trust rather his own personal knowledge and his memory of their lifelong friendship than any such calumny. He represents himself as plunged in the depths of misery. He would rather die than endure longer the burden of such a life. It is not life at all; it is mere existence. Doubtless this is mostly rhetoric, but the true state of the writer's mind seems to come out in a passage in which he refers to certain definite persons well known to the receiver, though obscure to us. The upshot of his gloomy reflections is:

This letter illustrates well traits of Erasmus which were to become very marked in his future work. He was already showing that joy in the idea of being persecuted which later seems to have reacted on his memory of his earliest years. It flattered his vanity to think that men cared enough about him to abuse him, and such abuse gave him an added claim upon the devotion of his friends. His nature demanded affection and admiration, and he was ready to repay them in kind, so long as he thereby incurred no lasting or burdensome obligation.

These singular contradictions of Erasmus' nature are most clearly brought out in his early correspondence with his friend Battus, a young man whom he met at Cambrai, and who became tutor to the son of the Marchioness of Veere. In connection with Battus, also, we learn to know Erasmus for the first time as a suitor for patronage. The Battus letters, some score in number, cover the period just before and just after his first trip to England, that is, about the year 1500. We are to think of him at this time as firmly fixed in his determination to be a scholar and, to this end, to get to Italy as soon as ever it might be possible. He wanted to take his doctor's degree there, and thought of Italy as a scholar's paradise. But to gain this great privilege he was not prepared for every sacrifice. One is apt to think of Erasmus as a wanderer, and with good reason, but after all he had little of the typical Bohemian in him. He was, it is true, a poor youth, but his poverty was always a comfortable poverty. There was nothing, apparently, to prevent him from taking his staff in his hand and making his way on foot, if need were, as many another poor scholar had done, to the goal of his desires. That was Luther's method of seeing Italy, under a very different impulse. Probably nothing would have done so much to chase away the megrims that were always pestering him. He would have had less reason to complain of his digestion and his bad sleeping—but if he could not have complained he would, perhaps, have been unhappier still. Meanwhile, he had to have books, he must eat only just such food as seemed to suit him, he kept a horse, and could not think of a journey without at least one servant and two horses. Italy seemed indefinitely far away. Private tutoring was a slippery source of revenue; frequent visitations of the plague scattered his pupils and he had to cast about him for ways and means. There were two resources: a place with an income and, presumably, with duties attached to it, or a patron. For obvious reasons, he preferred the latter.

Battus, his dear Battus, was pretty comfortably fixed at the castle of Tournehens on the island of Walcheren, the residence of the Marchioness of Veere. He was a good fellow and might be counted on to do his friend a good turn. We have Erasmus, then, in the Battus letters in an entirely new character,—as the flatterer of the great for his own personal advantage. The earliest indication of relations with the marchioness is in a Paris letter[32] to Battus, which begins:

Then follows an account of some troubles about certain manuscripts and money lost by unsafe messengers, and then he returns to the subject of the marchioness.

This letter is one of the most important revelations of Erasmus' methods of providing for himself. Battus, his friend, had apparently held out to him a prospect of nothing less than a regular settlement at the court of the Marchioness Anna. Erasmus speaks especially of a settled life of study, with Battus as the chief attraction. But he is not going to give himself away too easily. He admits that he is at the end of his resources, but it would never do to let my Lady know this. His cue is to raise his own value in her eyes. So he delays, on the plea of important engagements; he reminds Battus that his stake in the affair is the same as his own—though one hardly sees why—and he urges him to caution lest he seem too eager in his suit. He flatters him with praise of his eloquence and with expressions of entire confidence. It is not a guileless youth whom we meet here, but a man of the world, conscious of himself to the point of morbidness, and yet willing to go pretty far along the road of sycophancy to the great.

The journey to Tournehens took place in the winter of 1497. In his account of it in a letter[33] to Mountjoy, Erasmus figures himself as the especial victim of hostile gods. He might have been Hannibal crossing the Alps, so magnificent is his language. Even the testimony of the oldest inhabitant is not omitted in proof of the terrors of the way. It is worth noticing that the gorgeous spectacle of trees encrusted with ice, the deep-drifted snow, the castle gleaming in a complete icy shroud, roused in Erasmus no sense of beauty or of grandeur. He was occupied solely with his own discomforts and describes all this as so much evidence of a malignant fate.

We seem to have here a reference to his bÊte noire, the Paris persecutor, with whom Mountjoy was in some way associated.

The same tone of extreme laudation is kept up in a short and hurried letter[34] sent back to Battus from Antwerp on his way home. He has evidently been well treated, but is not yet at his ease about future favours from the lady. "I will fly back," he writes, "as soon as ever I can, if the gods permit." The remaining letters of this correspondence may belong to a later period, but will serve here to show how Erasmus continued his suit. While he is exhausting the language of flattery about his fair patron, he makes mysterious allusions to possible checks upon her liberality. She is in trouble; there are demands made upon her by unworthy persons. Finally it appears that she married someone quite below her station. The burden of Erasmus' song is that Battus ought to get ahead of these other claimants on the lady's bounty and make sure of his case before it is too late. One letter[35] shows downright ill-temper towards his dear friend, which he partly excuses on the ground of continued ill-health. Battus, it seems, had been urging him to write something, probably as an equivalent for favours to come. He replies:

"I hope to die if I ever in my life so hated to write anything as I did those trifles, nay, those Gnathonisms, which I have written for my Lady, for the Provost and for the Abbot. I know you will say this is my ill-temper; but you won't say that, Battus, if you think of my condition or if you consider how hard it is to force the mind to the writing of a great work, and how much harder yet, when it is all in a glow, to have it called off to other and trifling things. Because you haven't tried this yourself you fancy that my mind is always in perfect order, always on the alert, as yours is when you are enjoying the greatest possible leisure. Don't you understand that there is no worse burden than a mind wearied by writing, and don't you think I am doing enough here to satisfy those whose favours I enjoy? You are asking me for bales of books, but you don't help me to get the leisure which the writing of books demands. It isn't enough for you if I shall some day immortalise our friendship and the favour of my Lady by my books, but I must be writing you six hundred letters every day. It is now a year since you promised me money and meanwhile you send me nothing but hopes: 'I don't despair, I will push your case with all zeal.'—This sort of thing has been crammed into my ears too long; it makes me sick. And finally you lament the hard fortune of your mistress. You seem to me to be ailing with another's sickness. She neglects her fortune; you feel the pain! She fools and trifles with her N. and you snarl out: 'She hasn't anything to give.' Well! the only thing I see clearly is that if she gives nothing for these reasons she will never give anything, for reasons of this sort are never wanting to the great. How little it would be, with such vast wealth, fairly running to waste, to send me two hundred francs. She has plenty to keep those cowled whoremongers, those low-lived wretches,—you know whom I mean,—but she has nothing to provide leisure for a man who might write books worthy to live—if I may brag a little of myself. She gets into many a tight place, but it's her own fault, if she prefers to keep that pretty fellow rather than a grave and serious man, as becomes her age and sex. If she doesn't change her mind I foresee still greater troubles;—and yet I am not writing in anger against her, for indeed I love her as I ought, considering what she has done for me. But, come now, how can it hurt her fortune if I get two hundred francs? In seven hours she will never know it. The whole business comes to this: that we get the money out of her, if not in cash, then from her banker, so that I can draw it here at Paris. You have been writing letters and letters to her in this affair, asking, hinting, going round about; but what could be more useless? You ought to have watched your chance, gone at it carefully and then put it through boldly; now the same thing has got to be done, but too late. I hope to die, but I believe you might have carried it through as I wish, if you had only taken hold of it with more spirit. You can be a little more pushing in your friend's cause without offending my modesty.... Good-bye, my dear Battus, and take in good part what I have written, not in temper nor in a panic, but as to the man who is the very dearest of all men to me."