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.
[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 inclined to grudge time given to business: for with Jerome beginning and all the scholars whom we mentioned coming in and out, Amorbach's house in Klein-Basel became an 'Academy' which could bear comparison with Aldus' at Venice. It was worth Boniface's while, too, to take his course at Basle under such circumstances; especially as in 1511 John Cono began to teach Greek and Hebrew regularly to the printer's sons and to any one else who wished to come and learn. It is worth noticing that not one of these young men went to Italy for his humanistic education.