PETRARCH THE MAN 



avoid the scenes of his love, exclaims: ^' How many 

 times in Avignon, — which has been, I will not say the 

 cause, but the laboratory of your love, when you 

 thought you were cured, as you would have been to a 

 considerable extent, had you only fled, — how many 

 times, I say, wandering about those parts of the city 

 you know so well, at the mere sight of the places, with- 

 out seeing any one, recalling your vanities of old, and 

 overcome by the recollection, you have stopped, sighing 

 heavily! Then with great difficulty restraining your 

 tears, and feeling half wounded, you have said to your- 

 self, ^ I feel that my old enemy. Love, is hiding here.' " 

 Where should Petrarch go to escape love ? In his 

 poems he says, to Vaucluse; but black care follows him 

 there. He has fled from the scenes which reminded 

 him of his passion, but it is impossible to get rid of 

 himself. He is still tortured by his love. The descrip- 

 tion which he gives in his poetical epistle to Lelio {Ep, 

 I, 8) may well be rhetorical ; but I do not think the 

 same can be said of a remarkable poetical epistle to 

 Giacomo Colonna {Ep., i, 7). He begins it with the 

 words : " You wish to hear what I am doing, my manner 

 of life, the state of my affairs. I will not conceal the 

 truth from you, nor tell you what is false. It will be as 

 though I were speaking to myself. Since you feel a 

 fatherly interest in me, I will speak, and perhaps you 

 will be able to help me with advice. There is a certain 

 lady, illustrious because of her virtue and her family, 

 celebrated and made famous in my songs. I had hoped 



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