Two little notes to Servatius at this time are quite in the usual tone of Erasmian discontent. He says that his principal object in coming to Italy was to study Greek but "_jam frigent studia, fervent bella_" "studies are cold, but wars are hot,"--he will endeavour to fly back again very soon and hopes to see his friend the following summer. While wars are planning study takes a holiday. He makes an identical promise to another friend and was probably quite sincere in fancying that Italy, like every other place he had tried, was a failure. Evidently he was in trouble about his pupils. Writing to one of them twenty-five years afterward[71] he says: [71] iii.², 1397. "it was the fault of that fellow, whom you nickname the '_scarabeus_,' not only that I had to leave you sooner than I had intended, but that the pleasure of our companionship was so embittered that if I had not been kept by a sense of duty, I could not have endured that monster for a month. I have often wondered that your cautious father could have been so thoughtless as to intrust his most precious treasures to a man who was scarce fit to keep swine, nay, who was of such feeble mind that he rather needed a keeper himself." The whole affair is almost an echo of the trouble with the "old man" at Paris and would be too trifling for notice were it not almost the only incident in connection with Erasmus' residence of more than a year at Bologna which has come down to us. Of course the climate was bad and especially unsuited to his requirements. The summer of 1507 found Erasmus still at Bologna. It was an exceptionally hot season--so he says--and the plague broke out with violence. It is apropos of this plague and an incident which he relates in connection with it, that we come once more to the famous letter, mentioned early in our narrative,[72] in which Erasmus begs to be released from the obligation of wearing the monastic dress. The letter is addressed to Lambertus Grunnius, a papal secretary at Rome, and contains, by way of introduction, that long series of details about the compulsory entrance into the monastery of a youth called Florentius, which has been generally accepted as a truthful narrative of the writer's own experience. We have already followed the indications of this letter with some care down to the point where Erasmus was safely invested with the monastic garb and had made up his mind to make the best of it. At this point, with one of those jumps so common in his style, he comes to the time of his Italian visit and continues: [72] See Introduction.