This account of the journey from Basel to Louvain indicates with tolerable distinctness that Erasmus commanded considerable resources. He had more than one horse and at least one servant. The horses were shipped on the boat whenever he travelled by water, and apparently this was regarded as the safer way to travel. He speaks with especial relief of meeting no soldiers on the land journey. Carriages he seems to have hired; but he twice uses expressions which go to show that such carriages were not exclusively for the use of the hirer. He says that Ulrich Farnbul came by chance into the same carriage with him, and again on the last stage he himself gets into a carriage going to Louvain. It is too early to think of regular public conveyance, but apparently a traveller did not object to sharing his carriage and expense with another. Our interest is to observe that such travelling must have implied a large outlay and must have gone far to account for Erasmus' persistent complaints of poverty. From Louvain Erasmus wrote back a semi-humorous little letter to his friend, the learned toll-gatherer of Boppard[110]: [110] iii.¹, 353-D. "What could have been more unexpected than that I should find at Boppard an Eschenfeld, a student of my works?--a publican devoted to the Muses and to liberal learning! Christ made it a reproach to the Pharisees that harlots and publicans should go before them into the kingdom of heaven; tell me, is it not equally shameful that priests and monks should be living for luxury and the service of their bellies, while publicans are embracing the cause of liberal learning? They are consecrating themselves wholly to guzzling, while Eschenfeld divides himself between the Kaiser and his studies! You showed plainly enough what opinion you had formed of me; and I shall have done well, if the sight of me has not rubbed off a little of it. "But, alack! alack! that jolly red wine of yours mightily tickled our boatman's wife, a full-breasted and bibulous female; she wouldn't share a drop of it, though they kept calling for some. She drank all she wanted and then what a row! She nearly slew a maid-servant with a mighty ladle and we could hardly stop the fight. Then when she got on board she went for her husband, and came near throwing him into the Rhine. There you see the power of your wine. It is worth noticing that Erasmus represents his settlement at Louvain as the result of a freak on the part of those evil fates of which he liked to fancy himself the especial victim. To make his climax more effective he pictures the joys of meeting his Louvain friends: "What dinners! what a welcome! what talks I was promising myself! I had decided, if the autumn should be a pleasant one, to go over to England and to accept what the king has so many times offered me--but oh! deceitful hopes of mortal men--etc!"