The Emperor, who regarded Milan only as a fine large prison, got out of it as soon as he could.  Petrarch accompanied him as far as five miles beyond Piacenza, but refused to comply with the Emperor’s solicitations to continue with him as far as Rome.

The Emperor departed from Sienna the 28th of March, with the Empress and all his suite.  On the 2nd of April he arrived at Rome.  During the next two days he visited the churches in pilgrim’s attire.  On Sunday, which was Easter day, he was crowned, along with his Empress; and, on this occasion, he confirmed all the privileges of the Roman Church, and all the promises that he had made to the Popes Clement VI. and Innocent VI.  One of those promises was, that he should not enter Rome except upon the day of his coronation, and that he should not sleep in the city.  He kept his word most scrupulously.  After leaving the church of St. Peter, he went with a grand retinue to St. John’s di Latrana, where he dined, and, in the evening, under pretext of a hunting-party, he went and slept at St. Lorenzo, beyond the walls.

The Emperor arrived at Sienna on the 29th of April.  He had there many conferences with the Cardinal Albornoz, to whom he promised troops for the purpose of reducing the tyrants with whom the Legate was at war.  His Majesty then went to Pisa, where, on the 21st of May, 1355, a sedition broke out against him, which nearly cost him his life.  He left Tuscany without delay, with his Empress and his whole suite, to return to Germany, where he arrived early in June.  Many were the affronts he met with on his route, and he recrossed the Alps, as Villani says, “with his dignity humbled, though with his purse well filled.”

Laelius, who had accompanied the Emperor as far as Cremona, quitted him at that place, and went to Milan, where he delivered to Petrarch the Prince’s valedictory compliments.  Petrarch’s indignation, at his dastardly flight vented itself in a letter to his Imperial Majesty himself, so full of unmeasured rebuke, that it is believed it was never sent.

Shortly after the departure of the Emperor, Petrarch had the satisfaction of hearing, in his own church of St. Ambrosio, the publication of a peace between the Venetians and Genoese.  It was concluded at Milan by the mediation of the Visconti, entirely to the advantage of the Genoese, to whom their victory gained in the gulf of Sapienza had given an irresistible superiority.  It cost the Venetians two hundred thousand florins.  Whilst the treaty of peace was proceeding, Venice witnessed the sad and strange spectacle of Marino Faliero, her venerable Doge, four-score years old, being dragged to a public execution.  Some obscurity still hangs over the true history of this affair.  Petrarch himself seems to have understood it but imperfectly, though, from his personal acquaintance with Faliero, and his humane indignation at seeing an old man whom he believed to be innocent, hurled from his seat of power, stripped of his ducal robes, and beheaded like the meanest felon, he inveighs against his execution as a public murder, in his letter on the subject to Guido Settimo.