At the same time, it is a proud trait in Petrarch’s character that he showed himself on this occasion not only an orator and a lawyer, but a perfect gentleman.  In the midst of all his zealous pleading, he stooped neither to satire nor personality against the opposing party.  He could say, with all the boldness of truth, in a letter to Ugolino di Rossi, the Bishop of Parma, “I pleaded against your house for Azzo Correggio, but you were present at the pleading; do me justice, and confess that I carefully avoided not only attacks on your family and reputation, but even those railleries in which advocates so much delight.”

On this occasion, Azzo had brought to Avignon, as his colleague in the lawsuit, Guglielmo da Pastrengo, who exercised the office of judge and notary at Verona.  He was a man of deep knowledge in the law; versed, besides, in every branch of elegant learning, he was a poet into the bargain.  In Petrarch’s many books of epistles, there are few letters addressed by him to this personage; but it is certain that they contracted a friendship at this period which endured for life.

All this time the Bishop of Lombes still continued at Rome; and, from time to time, solicited his friend Petrarch to join him.  “Petrarch would have gladly joined him,” says De Sade; “but he was detained at Avignon by his attachment to John Colonna and his love of Laura:”  a whimsical junction of detaining causes, in which the fascination of the Cardinal may easily be supposed to have been weaker than that of Laura.  In writing to our poet, at Avignon, the Bishop rallied Petrarch on the imaginary existence of the object of his passion.  Some stupid readers of the Bishop’s letter, in subsequent times, took it into their heads that there was a literal proof in the prelate’s jesting epistle of our poet’s passion for Laura being a phantom and a fiction.  But, possible as it may be, that the Bishop in reality suspected him to exaggerate the flame of his devotion for the two great objects of his idolatry, Laura and St. Augustine, he writes in a vein of pleasantry that need not be taken for grave accusation.  “You are befooling us all, my dear Petrarch,” says the prelate; “and it is wonderful that at so tender an age (Petrarch’s tender age was at this time thirty-one) you can deceive the world with so much art and success.  And, not content with deceiving the world, you would fain deceive Heaven itself.  You make a semblance of loving St. Augustine and his works; but, in your heart, you love the poets and the philosophers.  Your Laura is a phantom created by your imagination for the exercise of your poetry.  Your verse, your love, your sighs, are all a fiction; or, if there is anything real in your passion, it is not for the lady Laura, but for the laurel—­that is, the crown of poets.  I have been your dupe for some time, and, whilst you showed a strong desire to visit Rome, I hoped to welcome you there.  But my eyes are now opened to all your rogueries, which nevertheless, will not prevent me from loving you.”