end of the garden, and, as I endeavoured to accompany him, he in the kindest and gentlest manner waved his hand; but, upon my persevering, he cried out in a more peremptory manner, ’Stay! you must not at present attend me.’  Whilst he spoke these words, I fixed my eyes upon him, and saw the paleness of death upon his countenance.  Seized with horror, I uttered a loud cry, which awoke me.  I took notice of the time.  I told the circumstance to all my friends; and, at the expiration of five-and-twenty days, I received accounts of his death, which happened in the very same night in winch he had appeared to me.”

On a little reflection, this incident will not appear to be supernatural.  That Petrarch, oppressed as he was with anxiety about his friend, should fall into fanciful reveries during his sleep, and imagine that he saw him in the paleness of death, was nothing wonderful—­nay, that he should frame this allegory in his dream is equally conceivable.  The sleeper’s imagination is often a great improvisatore.  It forms scenes and stories; it puts questions, and answers them itself, all the time believing that the responses come from those whom it interrogates.

Petrarch, deeply attached to Azzo da Correggio, now began to consider himself as settled at Parma, where he enjoyed literary retirement in the bosom of his beloved Italy.  But he had not resided there a year, when he was summoned to Avignon by orders he considered that he could not disobey.  Tiraboschi, and after him Baldelli, ascribe his return to Avignon to the commission which he received in 1342, to go as advocate of the Roman people to the new Pope, Clement VI., who had succeeded to the tiara on the death of Benedict XII., and Petrarch’s own words coincide with what they say.  The feelings of joy with which Petrarch revisited Avignon, though to appearance he had weaned himself from Laura, may be imagined.  He had friendship, however, if he had not love, to welcome him.  Here he met, with reciprocal gladness, his friends Socrates and Laelius, who had established themselves at the court of the Cardinal Colonna.  “Socrates,” says De Sade, “devoted himself entirely to Petrarch, and even went with him to Vaucluse.”  It thus appears that Petrarch had not given up his peculium on the Sorgue, nor had any one rented the field and cottage in his absence.

Benedict’s successor, Clement VI., was conversant with the world, and accustomed to the splendour of courts.  Quite a contrast to the plain rigidity of Benedict, he was courteous and munificent, but withal a voluptuary; and his luxury and profusion gave rise to extortions, to rapine, and to boundless simony.  His artful and arrogant mistress, the Countess of Turenne, ruled him so absolutely, that all places in his gift, which had escaped the grasp of his relations, were disposed of through her interest; and she amassed great wealth by the sale of benefices.

The Romans applied to Clement VI., as they had applied to Benedict XII., imploring him to bring back the sacred seat to their capital; and they selected Petrarch to be among those who should present their supplication.  Our poet appealed to his Holiness on this subject, both in prose and verse.  The Pope received him with smiles, complimented him on his eloquence, bestowed on him the priory of Migliorino, but, for the present, consigned his remonstrance to oblivion.