"I congratulate you on your bodily health, but am very sorry to hear of your distress of mind.... I fear you have been imposed upon by the trickery of certain men who are bragging nowadays, with splendid phrases, of their apostolic liberty. Believe me, if you knew more of the affair, your own form of life would be less wearisome to you. I see a kind of men springing up, from which my very soul revolts. I see that no one is growing better, but all are growing worse, so far at least as I have made their acquaintance, so that I greatly regret that formerly I advocated in writing the liberty of the spirit, though I did this with a good purpose and with no suspicion that a generation like this would come into being.... "You have lived now so many years in your community without blame, and now, as you say, your life is inclining toward its evening--you may be eight or nine years my junior. You are living in a most comfortable place, and in a most healthful climate. You derive great happiness from the conversation of learned men; you have plenty of good books and a clever talent. What can be sweeter in this world than to wander in such meadows and taste beforehand, as it were, the joys of the heavenly life? especially at your age and in these days, the most turbulent and ruinous that ever were. I have known some, who, deceived by the phantom of liberty, have deserted their orders. They changed their dress and took to themselves wives, destitute meanwhile, living as exiles and hateful to their relatives to whom they had been dear.... "Finally, my dearest brother in Christ, by our ancient and unbroken friendship and by Christ I beg, I beseech, I implore you to put this discontent wholly out of your mind; and to give no ear to the fatal discourses of men who will bring you no comfort, but will rather laugh at you when they have trapped you into their snare. If with your whole heart you shall turn yourself entirely to meditation on the heavenly life, believe me you will find abundant consolation, and that little restlessness you speak of will vanish like smoke." CHAPTER II PARIS AND HOLLAND 1492-1498 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.