Before he left Avignon, he went to take leave of Laura.  He found her at an assembly which she often frequented.  “She was seated,” he says, “among those ladies who are generally her companions, and appeared like a beautiful rose surrounded with flowers smaller and less blooming.”  Her air was more touching than usual.  She was dressed perfectly plain, and without pearls or garlands, or any gay colour.  Though she was not melancholy, she did not appear to have her wonted cheerfulness, but was serious and thoughtful.  She did not sing, as usual, nor speak with that voice which used to charm every one.  She had the air of a person who fears an evil not yet arrived.  “In taking leave of her,” says Petrarch, “I sought in her looks for a consolation of my own sufferings.  Her eyes had an expression which I had never seen in them before.  What I saw in her face seemed to predict the sorrows that threatened me.”

This was the last meeting that Petrarch and Laura ever had.

Petrarch set out for Italy, towards the close of 1347, having determined to make that country his residence for the rest of his life.

Upon his arrival at Genoa he wrote to Rienzo, reproaching him for his follies, and exhorting him to return to his former manly conduct.  This advice, it is scarcely necessary to say, was like dew and sunshine bestowed upon barren sands.

From Genoa he proceeded to Parma, where he received the first information of the catastrophe of the Colonna family, six of whom had fallen in battle with Rienzo’s forces.  He showed himself deeply affected by it, and, probably, was so sincerely.  But the Colonnas, though his former patrons, were still the enemies of a cause which he considered sacred, much as it was mismanaged and disgraced by the Tribune; and his grief cannot be supposed to have been immoderate.  Accordingly, the letter which he wrote to Cardinal Colonna on this occasion is quite in the style of Seneca, and more like an ethical treatise than an epistle of condolence.

It is obvious that Petrarch slowly and reluctantly parted with his good opinion of Rienzo.  But, whatever sentiments he might have cherished respecting him, he was now doomed to hear of his tragic fall.

The revolution which overthrew the Tribune was accomplished on the 15th of December, 1347.  That his fall was, in a considerable degree, owing to his faults, is undeniable; and to the most contemptible of all faults—­personal vanity.  How hard it is on the great mass of mankind, that this meanness is so seldom disjoined from the zeal of popular championship!  New power, like new wine, seems to intoxicate the strongest heads.  How disgusting it is to see the restorer of Roman liberty dazzled like a child by a scarlet robe and its golden trimming!  Nevertheless, with all his vanity, Rienzo was a better friend to the republic than those who dethroned him.  The Romans would have been wise to have supported Rienzo, taking even his foibles into the account.  They re-admitted their oligarchs; and, if they repented of it, as they did, they are scarcely entitled to our commiseration.