Perhaps you imagine that money comes to me anyhow.  You know that for the last two years I have not been printing.  We are living upon capital, the whole lot of us.[23] I have to provide for my household.[24] I have to provide for your brother Basil, and for Boniface, whom I have sent to Schlettstadt.  I ought, too, to do something for your sister:  for several sober and honourable men are at me about her, and I do not like to be unfair towards her.  So just remember that you are not the only one.

You may take it for sure that I cannot, and will not, give you more than 22 or 23 crowns a year, or at the most 24.  If you can live on that at Paris, well:  I will undertake to let you have it for some years.  But if it is not enough, come home and I will feed you at my table.  Think it over and let me know by the next messenger:  or else come yourself.

I have been told on good authority that in the town (lodgings, as opposed to a college) one can live quite decently on 16 or at most 20 crowns:  also that sometimes three or four students, or more, take a house or a room, and then club together and engage a cook, and that their weekly bills scarcely amount to a teston 1/5 of a crown a head.  If that is so, join a party like that and live carefully.

     Good-bye.  Your mother sends her love.

     Your affectionate father, John Amorbach.

     [22] Bruno, satis admirari non possum quid agas vt tot pecunias
          consumas.
     [23] Consumimus omnes de capitali.
     [24] Habeo prouidere domui meae.

No answer came back, and on 18 August John Amorbach wrote again.  Think of a modern parent waiting a month for an answer to such a communication and getting none!  It might quite well have come.  But posts were slow and uncertain; and when he wrote again, the father’s righteous indignation had somewhat abated.  It was not till 16 October that Bruno replied, but with a very proper letter.  He was a good fellow, and knew what he owed to his father.  After expressing his regrets and determination to live within his allowance in future, he goes on:  ’There is a man just come from Italy, who is lecturing publicly on Greek. This was Francis Tissard of Amboise, who began lecturing on Lascaris’ Greek Grammar. I have so long been wishing to learn this language, and here at length is an opportunity.  I have plunged headlong into it, and with such a teacher I feel sure of satisfying my desires, which are as eager as any inclinations of the senses.  So please allow me to stay a few months longer, and then I shall be able to bring home some Greek with me.  After that I will come whenever you bid me.’  Next summer he did return and settled down to work in the press.  It was well worth while, even for a scholar who was eager to go on learning, and was