e Rector's first appeal
evoked no response; so the Steward went on about his business. After
three weeks he returned, having visited other schools, but bringing no
one with him. Once more Ostendorp addressed the third and fourth
classes in impressive words. But all seemed in vain. The students had
paid their school fees for the half-year, and were ashamed to ask for
them back from the Rector and other teachers--into whose pockets they
appear to have gone direct. Their money paid for board and lodging
would have been sacrificed also. It happened, too, to be exceptionally
cold--not the weather in which any one would lightly set out on a
journey. We must remember that the calendar had not yet been
rectified, and that they were about ten days nearer to midwinter than
their dates show.

On occasions the whole school came together to hear the Rector--it was
at such times, Erasmus tells us, that he heard Hegius. At one of these
gatherings during the Steward's second visit Butzbach was sitting next
to two friends from his own part of the world, Peter of Spires and
Paul of Kitzingen. They were above him in the school, having passed
their entrance examination before the Rector with such credit that
they were placed at once in the third class--a rare distinction--and
Paul indeed at the end of his first half-year had come out top and
passed into the second. The friends talked together of the life of the
cloister, of the happiness of study amid the practice of holiness and
in the presence of God. At the end Peter and Butzbach sought out the
Steward and gave him their names: Paul, the brilliant leader of the
trio, remained behind in the world, and became a professor at Cologne.

Butzbach said farewell to the masters who had taught him, and to his
various benefactors in the town, all of whom applauded his decision.
On St. Barbara's Day, 4 Dec. 1500, the party set out, and were
accompanied out of the town by students who swarmed about them like
bees; Butzbach, when they at length took leave, urging them to follow
his example. Two days later they were at Emmerich, and after crossing
the Rhine on the ice, so bitter was the frost, they were overtaken by
the night at a convent and sought shelter. It proved to be a house of
Brigittines, with separate orders of men and women. One of the party,
a priest from Deventer, had a kinswoman among the nuns, but was not
allowed to see her. On 8 December the feast of the Conception of the
Virgin, as