thirty-four of the brethren who had continued with him.  He paid them every service, received their last sighs, and buried them when death had taken off those to whom that office belonged.  With only a dog left for his companion, Gherardo watched at night to guard the house, and took his repose by day.  When the summer was over, he went to a neighbouring monastery of the Carthusians, who enabled him to restore his convent.

While the Carthusians were making this honourable mention of Father Gherardo, the prelate cast his eyes from time to time upon Petrarch.  “I know not,” says the poet, “whether my eyes were filled with tears, but my heart was tenderly touched.”  The Carthusians, at last discovering who Petrarch was, saluted him with congratulations.  Petrarch gives an account of this interview in a letter to his brother himself.

Padua was too near to Venice for Petrarch not to visit now and then that city which he called the wonder of the world.  He there made acquaintance with Andrea Dandolo, who was made Doge in 1343, though he was only thirty-six years of age, an extraordinary elevation for so young a man; but he possessed extraordinary merit.  His mind was cultivated; he loved literature, and easily became, as far as mutual demonstrations went, the personal friend of Petrarch; though the Doge, as we shall see, excluded this personal friendship from all influence on his political conduct.

The commerce of the Venetians made great progress under the Dogeship of Andrea Dandolo.  It was then that they began to trade with Egypt and Syria, whence they brought silk, pearls, the spices, and other products of the East.  This prosperity excited the jealousy of the Genoese, as it interfered with a commerce which they had hitherto monopolized.  When the Venetians had been chased from Constantinople by the Emperor Michael Paleologus, they retained several fortresses in the Black Sea, which enabled them to continue their trade with the Tartars in that sea, and to frequent the fair of Tana.  The Genoese, who were masters of Pera, a suburb of Constantinople, would willingly have joined the Greeks in expelling their Italian rivals altogether from the Black Sea; and privateering hostilities actually commenced between the two republics, which, in 1350, extended to the serious aspect of a national war.

The winter of that year was passed on both sides in preparations.  The Venetians sent ambassadors to the King of Arragon, who had some differences with the Genoese about the Island of Sardinia, and to the Emperor of Constantinople, who saw with any sensation in the world but delight the flag of Genoa flying over the walls of Pera.  A league between those three powers was quickly concluded, and their grand, common object was to destroy the city of Genoa.

It was impossible that these great movements of Venice should be unknown at Padua.  Petrarch, ever zealous for the common good of Italy, saw with pain the kindling of a war which could not but be fatal to her, and thought it his duty to open his heart to the Doge of Venice, who had shown him so much friendship.  He addressed to him, therefore, the following letter from Padua, on the 14th of March, 1351:—­