It was long since any such phenomenon had appeared among the rosy friars of Erfurt. They could not tell what to make of him. Staupitz, the prior, listened to his accusations of himself in confession. 'My good fellow,' he said, 'don't be so uneasy; you have committed no sins of the least consequence; you have not killed anybody, or committed adultery, or things of that sort. If you sin to some purpose, it is right that you should think about it, but don't make mountains out of trifles.' Very curious: to the commonplace man the uncommonplace is for ever unintelligible. What was the good of all that excitement--that agony of self-reproach for little things? None at all, if the object is only to be an ordinary good sort of man--if a decent fulfilment of the round of common duties is the be-all and the end-all of human life on earth. The plague came by-and-by into the town. The commonplace clergy ran away--went to their country-houses, went to the hills, went anywhere--and they wondered in the same way why Luther would not go with them. They admired him and liked him. They told him his life was too precious to be thrown away. He answered, quite simply, that his place was with the sick and dying; a monk's life was no great matter. The sun he did not doubt would continue to shine, whatever became of him. 'I am no St. Paul,' he said; 'I am afraid of death; but there are things worse than death, and if I die, I die.' Even a Staupitz could not but feel that he had an extraordinary youth in his charge. To divert his mind from feeding upon itself, he devised a mission for him abroad, and brother Martin was despatched on business of the convent to Rome. Luther too, like Erasmus, was to see Rome; but how different the figures of the two men there! Erasmus goes with servants and horses, the polished, successful man of the world. Martin Luther trudges penniless and barefoot across the Alps, helped to a meal and a night's rest at the monasteries along the road, or begging, if the convents fail him, at the farm-houses. He was still young, and too much occupied with his own sins to know much of the world outside him. Erasmus had no dreams. He knew the hard truth on most things. But Rome, to Luther's eager hopes, was the city of the saints, and the court and palace of the Pope fragrant with the odours of Paradise. 'Blessed Rome,' he cried, as he entered the gate--'Blessed Rome, sanctified with the blood of martyrs!'