Petrarch made a backward movement, to regain his place among his company.  His horse, in backing, slipped with his hind-legs into a ditch on the side of the road, but, by a sort of miracle, the animal kept his fore-feet for some time on the top of the ditch.  If he had fallen back, he must have crushed his rider.  Petrarch was not afraid, for he was not aware of his danger; but Galeazzo Visconti and his people dismounted to rescue the poet, who escaped without injury.

The Legate treated Petrarch, who little expected it, with the utmost kindness and distinction, and, granting all that he asked for his friends, pressed him to mention something worthy of his own acceptance.  Petrarch replied:  “When I ask for my friends, is it not the same as for myself?  Have I not the highest satisfaction in receiving favours for them?  I have long put a rein on my own desires.  Of what, then, can I stand in need?”

After the departure of the Legate, Petrarch retired to his rus in urbe.  In a letter dated thence to his friend the Prior of the Holy Apostles, we find him acknowledging feelings that were far distant from settled contentment.  “You have heard,” he says, “how much my peace has been disturbed, and my leisure broken in upon, by an importunate crowd and by unforeseen occupations.  The Legate has left Milan.  He was received at Florence with unbounded applause:  as for poor me, I am again in my retreat.  I have been long free, happy, and master of my time; but I feel, at present, that liberty and leisure are only for souls of consummate virtue.  When we are not of that class of beings, nothing is more dangerous for a heart subject to the passions than to be free, idle, and alone.  The snares of voluptuousness are then more dangerous, and corrupt thoughts gain an easier entrance—­above all, love, that seducing tormentor, from whom I thought that I had now nothing more to fear.”

From these expressions we might almost conclude that he had again fallen in love; but if it was so, we have no evidence as to the object of his new passion.

During his half-retirement, Petrarch learned news which disturbed his repose.  A courier arrived, one night, bringing an account of the entire destruction of the Genoese fleet, in a naval combat with that of the Venetians, which took place on the 19th of August, 1353, near the island of Sardinia.  The letters which the poet had written, in order to conciliate those two republics, had proved as useless as the pacificatory efforts of Clement VI. and his successor, Innocent.  Petrarch, who had constantly predicted the eventual success of Genoa, could hardly believe his senses, when he heard of the Genoese being defeated at sea.  He wrote a letter of lamentation and astonishment on the subject to his friend Guido Settimo.  He saw, as it were, one of the eyes of his country destroying the other.  The courier, who brought these tidings to Milan, gave a distressing account of the state of Genoa.  There was not a family which had not lost one of its members.