It would seem, however, that the Bishop’s conversation made this retirement very agreeable to Petrarch; for it inspired him with the idea of writing a “Treatise on a Solitary Life.”  Of this work he made a sketch in a short time, but did not finish it till twenty years afterwards, when he dedicated and presented it to the Bishop of Cavaillon.

It is agreeable to meet, in Petrarch’s life at the shut-up valley, with any circumstance, however trifling, that indicates a cheerful state of mind; for, independently of his loneliness, the inextinguishable passion for Laura never ceased to haunt him; and his love, strange to say, had mad, momentary hopes, which only deepened at their departure the returning gloom of despair.  Petrarch never wrote more sonnets on his beloved than during the course of this year.  Laura had a fair and discreet female friend at Avignon, who was also the friend of Petrarch, and interested in his attachment.  The ideas which this amiable confidante entertained of harmonizing success in misplaced attachment with honour and virtue must have been Platonic, even beyond the feelings which Petrarch, in reality, cherished; for, occasionally, the poet’s sonnets are too honest for pure Platonism.  This lady, however, whose name is unknown, strove to convince Laura that she ought to treat her lover with less severity.  “She pushed Laura forward,” says De Sade, “and kept back Petrarch.”  One day she recounted to the poet all the proofs of affection, and after these proofs she said, “You infidel, can you doubt that she loves you?” It is to this fair friend that he is supposed to have addressed his nineteenth sonnet.

This year, his Laura was seized with a defluxion in her eyes, which made her suffer much, and even threatened her with blindness.  This was enough to bring a sonnet from Petrarch (his 94th), in which he laments that those eyes which were the sun of his life should be for ever eclipsed.  He went to see her during her illness, having now the privilege of visiting her at her own house, and one day he found her perfectly recovered.  Whether the ophthalmia was infectious, or only endemic, I know not; but so it was, that, whilst Laura’s eyes got well, those of her lover became affected with the same defluxion.  It struck his imagination, or, at least, he feigned to believe poetically, that the malady of her eyes had passed into his; and, in one of his sonnets, he exults at this welcome circumstance.[J] “I fixed my eyes,” he said, “on Laura; and that moment a something inexpressible, like a shooting star, darted from them to mine.  This is a present from love, in which I rejoice.  How delightful it is thus to cure the darling object of one’s soul!”