The motive of Erasmus' wanderings in these early years of the century is not clear. More easily perceptible than any other is his fear of the plague and a nervous dread of other illness. When things went badly in one place he betook himself to another, but it is hard to find much principle even in his health-seeking. He speaks of finding relief in his native land and again writes that Zeeland is hell to him, he "never felt a harsher climate or one less suited to his poor little body." The bishop of Cambrai had long since failed him. The bishop's brother, the abbot of St. Bertin, formerly a great friend, was of no use; the Marchioness was herself in some mysterious trouble; Battus alone, his precious Battus, was quite true to him, but not able to do much for him. Altogether it seems most probable that the conspiracy of the fates against our scholar may have been nothing more than a common feeling of distrust toward a sturdy beggar, who had not yet proved his value and who was not inclined to put up with any half-way charity. But meanwhile Erasmus was always at work. His real, permanent, and persistent interest was his own self-culture--not in any narrow or mean sense, but that he might be equal to the great demands he was preparing to make upon himself. Of all things he wished to make himself strong in Greek, and it is clear that he was dissatisfied with any teaching which thus far had been open to him. From this we ought not hastily to draw conclusions as to the badness of Greek teaching at Paris. Erasmus, like most men of original genius, was not a docile pupil. He knew intuitively, what it takes most of us a lifetime to find out, that every man must teach himself all that he ever really and effectively knows, and that this is especially true of all linguistic knowledge. Erasmus complains of his Greek teachers, but he did not sit down and wait for better ones. He went to work with such appliances as he had and read Greek books and gradually came to read them well. He learned Greek, in short, as he had learned Latin, by _using_ it.