"... on my lame horse rode quickly to the Count of Neuenahr's... staying at Bedburg... [where] I stayed five days very pleasantly, in such peace and quiet... I completed a good part of the revision -- I had taken that part of the New Testament with me...."And with good company there, felt well enough to go on to visit the Bishop of Liege, and then return healthy and ready for his friends in Brabant.
"What dinner-parties, what felicitations, what discussions I promised myself! But ah, deceptive human hopes! ah, the sudden and unexpected vicissitudes of human affairs! From these high dreams of happiness I was hurled to the depths of misfortune."Readied for the next day's travel with a pair of horses and a carriage, again, a potential delay threatened to disrupt Erasmus' forward motion.
"That night a wild hurricane [sic] sprang up, which had passed before the next morning. Nevertheless I rose after midnight, to make some notes for the Count; when it was already seven o'clock and the Count did not emerge, I asked for him to be waked. He came, and in his customary sly and modest way asked me whether I meant to leave in such bad weather, saying he was afraid for me. At that point, my dear Beatus, some god or bad angel deprived me, not of the half of my senses, as Hesiod says, but of the whole.... I wish that either my friend had warned me more sharply or that I had paid more attention to his most affectionate remonstrances! I was seized by the power of fate: what else am I to say? I climbed into an uncovered carriage, the wind blowing 'strong as when in the high mountains it shivers the trembling holm-oaks.' It was a south wind and blowing like the very pest, I thought I was well protected by my wrappings, but it went through evereything with its violence."Cold and wet he arrived in Aachen where he was taken by a priest to the house of a friend reccommended by the Count.
"There several canons [priests] were holding their usual drinking-party. My appetite had been sharpened by a very light lunch; but at the time they had nothing by them but carp, and cold carp at that. I ate to repletion. The drinking went on well into the night. I excused myself and went to bed, as I had very little sleep the night before.... [next] day at the Vice-Provost's house ... there was no fish there apart from eel... the fault of the storm... I lunched off a fish dried in the open air, which the Germans call Stockfisch, from the rod used to beat it... but I discovered that part of this one had not been properly cured. ...The weather ... appalling, I took myself off to the inn and ordered a fire to be lit. ... I began to feel very uncomfortable... went to the privy.... inserted my finger in my mouth, and the uncured fish came up, but that was all. I lay down afterwards, not so much sleeping as resting, without any pain in my head or body; then, having struck a bargain with the coachman over the bags, I received an invitation to the evening compotation. I excused myself without success."He went anyway. There was plenty of food but he still felt sour and drank only 'a little warmed ale.' When he came back out again 'his empty body shivered fearfully in the night air.' But by next morning he had the urge to move again.
"... I mounted my horse, who was lame and ailing, which made riding more uncomfortable. By now I was in such a state that I would have been better keeping warm in bed than mounted on horseback. But that district is the most countrified, roughest, barren, and unattractive imaginable, the inhabitants are so idle; so that I preferred to run away."He felt he could not depend on those locals in Aachen to care for him, because they were so idle. Afraid of the bandits that he thought were plentiful there, even this fear was driven out of his mind because of his illness. He went from Aachen to Maastricht (some seven or eight miles) where he stopped for a drink and then rode on to Tongeren another three miles.
"This last ride was by far the most painful to me. The awkward gait of the horse gave me excruciating pains in the kidneys. It would have been easier to walk, but I was afraid of sweating, and there was a danger of the night catching us still out in the country."Here he took some more ale and went to bed. In the morning he got up again to keep going but, mounted on a horse, he fainted. He was roused and put in a carriage to be delivered almost to St Troad [Sint Truiden] where he again found a bed to sleep in and arranged for passage the following day. Here he also learned that he had also missed finding the Bishop of Liege who he said he'd wanted to meet with on this journey. By the time he reached Louvain he had broke an ulcer and after a night's rest, called the surgeon. He applied poultices and told the servants on the way out that Erasmus had the plague. He didn't but boils and a fever. After two more 'medical opinions' Erasmus remained unconvinced and decided to trust it to God. In three days he had an appetite and then got back to his studies.
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Huizinga, Johan: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation with a selection from the letters of Erasmus ; (reprint), Bibliobazaar, Charleston, SC, 2008
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