His choice was Deventer.  One of the brethren wrote him an elegant letter to Hegius applying for admission; and though, as he says, he answered no questions in his entrance examination (which appears to have been oral), on the strength of the letter he was admitted and placed in the seventh class, a young man of twenty amongst the little boys who were making a beginning at grammar.  But he had no means of support except occasional jobs of tailor’s work, and hunger drove him back to Johannisberg.  There he might have continued, had not a chance meeting with his mother, when he had ridden over to Frankfort with the Abbot, given him a new spur.  She could not bear to think of his 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.