remaining a Lollhard, that is a lay-brother, all his days; and
pressing money privily into his hands, she besought the Abbot to let
him return to Deventer. In August 1498 he was there again, was
examined by Hegius, and was placed this time in the lowest class, the
eighth, in company with a number of stolid louts, who had fled to
school to escape being forced to serve as soldiers. There was reason
in their fears. The Duke of Gueldres was at war with the Bishop of
Utrecht. A hundred prisoners had been executed in the three days
before Butzbach's return, and as he strode into Deventer to take up
his books again, he may have seen their scarce-cold bodies swinging on
gibbets against the summer sunset. The schoolboy of to-day works in
happier surroundings.

Butzbach's career henceforward was fortunate. He was taken up by a
good and pious woman, Gutta Kortenhorff, who without regular vows had
devoted herself to a life of abstinence and self-sacrifice; taking
special pleasure in helping young men who were preparing for the
Franciscan or the reformed Benedictine Orders. For nine months
Butzbach lived in her house, doubtless out of gratitude rendering such
service as he could to his kind patroness. From the eighth class he
passed direct into the sixth, and at Easter 1499 he was promoted into
the fifth. This entitled him to admission to the Domus Pauperum
maintained by the Brethren of the Common Life for boys who were
intending to become monks; and so he transferred himself thither for
the remainder of his course. But he suffered much from illness, and
five several times made up his mind to give up and return home--once
indeed this was only averted by a swelling of his feet, which for a
prolonged period made it impossible for him to walk. After six months
in the fifth, and a year in the fourth class, he was moved up into the
third, thus traversing in little over two years what had occupied
Erasmus for something like nine.

Butzbach was by temperament inclined to glorify the past; in the
present he himself had a share, and therefore in his humility he
thought little of it. In consequence we must not take him too
literally in his account of the condition of the school; but it is too
interesting to pass over. 'In the old days', he says, 'Deventer was a
nursery for the Reformed Orders; they drew better boys, more suited to
religion, out of the fifth class, than they do now out of the second
or first, although now much better author