He has an illness of a few weeks, during most of which time he is steadily at work, and then he goes quietly back to his lodgings in the University and we hear no more of England. We know of no renewed offers from King Henry, nor indeed, so far, of any direct offers from him whatever. While Erasmus was at Basel, he was, so he tells us, invited by Duke Ernest of Bavaria to come to his university at Ingolstadt. He speaks of this in a letter to the bishop of Rochester, as one among the numerous indications of the favour with which the first edition of the New Testament had been received. He had so many offers that he could not remember them. "Some bishop in Germany whose name I have forgotten" wanted him for his university. He knows he is unworthy of all these honours, but is pleased to find that all his pains have earned the approval of good men. "Many are now reading the sacred Scriptures who confess that they would never have read them otherwise, and many persons everywhere are beginning to study Greek." In a letter[111] to Ammonius from Brussels in 1516 Erasmus tells of an offer of a bishopric in Sicily: [111] iii.¹, 137-D. Leclerc's date, 1514, is probably incorrect. "Do you want to laugh? When I got back to Brussels, I went to call on my Mæcenas, the chancellor [Selvagius]. He turned to the councillors who were standing about and said: 'This man doesn't know yet what a great man he is." Then to me: 'The Prince is trying to make you a bishop and had already given you a very desirable see in Sicily. But then he discovered that this see was on the list of those which are called "reserved," and has written to the pope to get his approval for you.' When I heard this, I could not help laughing; yet I am glad to know the good feeling of the king towards me--or rather of the chancellor, who, in this matter, is the king himself." Somewhat less apocryphal than these stories is the report of an offer from King Francis I. of France. It comes to us in a letter written by the French scholar, William Budæus, to Erasmus while he was in the Low Countries. Budæus says that William Parvus (Guillaume Petit), an ecclesiastic who stood very near the king, had told him that one day in the course of a conversation about literary men, the king had expressed his determination[112] [112] iii.¹, 169-A.