Then he drank of the brook; then he laved his hot feet and hands in it; it was very cold: it waked him.

He rose, and taking a run, leaped across it into Germany.
Even as he touched the strange land he turned suddenly and looked back.
"Farewell, ungrateful country!" he cried.

"But for her it would cost me nought to leave you for ever, and all my kith and kin, and--the mother that bore me, and--my playmates, and my little native town.

Farewell, fatherland--welcome the wide world! omne so-lum for-ti p p-at-r-a." And with these brave words in his mouth he drooped suddenly with arms and legs all weak, and sat down and sobbed bitterly upon the foreign soil.
When the young exile had sat a while bowed down, he rose and dashed the tears from his eyes like a man; and not casting a single glance more behind him, to weaken his heart, stepped out into the wide world.
His love and heavy sorrow left no room in him for vulgar misgivings.
Compared with rending himself from Margaret, it seemed a small thing to go on foot to Italy in that rude age.
All nations meet in a convent.

So, thanks to his good friends the monks, and his own thirst of knowledge, he could speak most of the languages needed on that long road.