PETRARCH THE MAN 



role in the active life about him, and an insatiable 

 passion for fame. The world about him was a contin- 

 ual battlefield; even so was his soul, and he could 

 never escape the strife. 



It is not unnatural that he should have experienced 

 some difficulty in making clear to St. Augustine the 

 cause of his trouble. St. Augustine asks: " What is it 

 that drives you to this despair — the course of temporal 

 things, physical pain, or the vicissitudes of fortune ? " 

 And Petrarch replies: " Not one of these things by 

 itself. If I had been attacked in single combat, I should 

 have held firm, but I am now overwhelmed by an entire 

 army. Each time that I am struck by the first blow of 

 Fortune, I stand firm and intrepid, reahze that I have 

 often been grievously struck before, and that I have 

 come out a victor. At the second blow I stagger a 

 little; if she return to the charge a third or fourth time, 

 I take refuge, not precipitately but deliberately, in the 

 citadel of reason. There, if Fortune besiege me with all 

 her army, if to subjugate me she assemble all the 

 miseries that can befall man, — memory of my past 

 suffering, fear of future ills, — hemmed in on all sides, 

 seized with terror at the sight of accumulated woes, I 

 lament and feel welhng up within me this cruel sorrow. 

 . . . Imagine some one surrounded by innumerable 

 enemies, without hope of escape or of obtaining mercy, 

 without consolation, to whom all is hostile . . . ." St. 

 Augustine answers: "Although your exposition is 

 confused, I see that your troubles rest upon your poor 



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