"This reproach would not be endured even if made against a Swiss soldier; against a poet, a lover of ease and quiet, it doesn't stick at all. And yet, in matters of this sort, to have no dread whatever seems to me rather the part of a log than of a brave man. When the fight is with an enemy that can be driven back, whose blows can be returned, who can be conquered by fighting, then if a man wants to seem brave, let him, for all I care. The Lernean Hydra, last and hardest of all the labours of Hercules, could not be overcome with steel but could be beaten by Greek fire; but what can you do against an evil that can be neither seen nor conquered? There are some things which it is better to run away from than to conquer. The brave Æneas did not go into battle with the sirens, but turned his helm far away from that shore of danger. 'But,' you say, 'there is no danger'--well, meanwhile I, on the safe side of danger, see a great many persons dying. I imitate the fox in Horace:--'I am alarmed at the footsteps, so many leading towards you and so few away.' In this condition of things I wouldn't hesitate to fly, not merely to Orleans, but to Cadiz or to the farthest of the far Orkneys; not because I am a timid person or of less than manly courage, but because I really do fear--not to die, for we are all born to die--but to die by my own fault. If Christ warned his disciples to flee from the wrath of their persecutors by straightway changing their residence, why should I not evade so deadly a foe when I conveniently can?" Yet he is not happy at Orleans; the Muses grow chilly in that city of law-books; he means to come back, and meanwhile he begs Faustus to write a prefatory letter to his Adages, which he has just put forth. He asks this not for the merit of the work, for he does not flatter himself so far as not to see how poor it is--but the worse the goods the more they need recommendation. Faustus gave the letter and it duly appeared, but whether it did not just suit Erasmus, or whether he could not quite bear to have his work recommended by anyone, he saw fit later to declare that the printer had wormed it out of Faustus. Perhaps, too, Faustus had a little overdone it and in the extravagance of this festive person's praise Erasmus may have detected a little sting of sarcasm. In a letter to his friend and pupil, Augustinus, Erasmus reproves him for taking too flattering a tone towards himself and says, by the way,