1327, upon the sixth day of April, at the first hour in the Church of St. Clara at Avignon." In the same minute way he records her death while he was at Verona, "ignorant of his fate."
"I have experienced," he adds, "a certain satisfaction in writing this bitter record of a cruel event, especially in this place where it will often come under my eyes, for so I may be led to reflect that life can afford me no farther pleasures."
He appears all through his career to have been struggling between his love for this unattainable lady and the monastic view of life as inculcated by St. Augustine. No wonder his was a tempest-tossed and melancholy soul! Among his published works the imaginary dialogue between himself and the saint lays bare the curious combat of a nature essentially modern in its instincts, while intellectually under the dominion of mediæval theories. His sentiment was noble in character: a noble love for a noble woman; but the pitiless saint will not accept that as an excuse for the soul's enslavement. The monitor does his utmost to prove that it is a chain utterly unworthy of a rational being, whose thoughts should be fixed on things eternal. It does not occur to Petrarch to make high claim for the sentiment itself, still less to number it among eternal things, as probably it would have occurred to a mind of that idealistic type had he lived a few hundred years later. But his feeling and his mental outlook are evidently not at one. He feels ahead of his thought by many centuries, and never all his life does he succeed in harmonising the two parts of his being, and that is probably why he was always unsatisfied, sad at heart even at his gayest; unable to fully enjoy the savour of life in spite of his extraordinary fulness of opportunity and his ardent nature.
VALE AND SOURCE OF THE SORGUE, VAUCLUSE.
By E. M. Synge.
As for the theory that Laura was merely a symbol for Laurea, the crown of poetic fame, it is not easy to accept the view in face of a letter of Petrarch to his friend, Giacomo Colonna, in which he speaks of this supposition: "Would that your humorous suggestion were true; would to God it were all a pretence and not a madness!"
His defence of this passion, in the "Segreto," is described by a writer of to-day as "purely modern."
"Petrarch was modern enough to grasp, and even defend against the perversions of monasticism and the current of theological speculation, one of the noblest of man's attributes."
In the singular dialogue between the poet and the saint, the poet, while making a brave stand for the unconquerable sentiment, finally allows the saint to have the best of the argument.
Barbara flatly refused to listen to the theory that Petrarch and Laura never exchanged so much as a word in their lives, but it is believed by many. The poet is said to have worshipped the lady at a distance across the golden shadows of the Church of St. Clara at Avignon, where she used to come for the celebration of Mass. Her family—if to the family of de Noves she really belonged—owned a château in the neighbourhood. She married into the house of De Sades (or so runs the story) and she was a niece of the famous Fanette, who was President of the renowned Court of Love at the Château of Romanin in the Alpilles: those strange little limestone mountains that we saw to the south as we looked over the country from the Rocher du Dom.
Some writers, on the other hand, speak of a passionate history, clandestine meetings, tragedy and despair. But of this there is not a hint in the poet's own writings. Nothing certain seems to be known about the matter, and it is even regarded as entirely fabulous by some sceptics who would banish from history all its charming stories, the mere fact of a romantic flavour seeming to them to prove a legend untrue. As if real life were constructed on such dull and unimaginative lines!
If, however, the story of Petrarch and Laura be well founded, he must have been the very prince of lovers, for his love was well-nigh untiring, although seemingly hopeless, uncheered by even an occasional meeting; and it remained in his heart obstinately and irrevocably, in spite of the most persistent efforts of his intellect and his religious sense to oust it; in spite of a life among the Courts of Europe the most brilliant and varied that can be imagined.
Petrarch possessed also the genius of friendship, and had swarms of friends. When Pope Clement VI., one of the number, lay dying in his fortress palace, the poet sent a message: "Remember the epitaph of the Roman Emperor Hadrian: 'Turba Medicorum Perii.'" And he wrote a letter to the Pope in the same strain: "What makes me really tremble is to see your bed surrounded with physicians who never agree." …
One likes to picture him in these old halls and to know that he possessed the genial faculty of making people feel the happier for his presence. Yet it is recorded that "deep remorse and profound melancholy afflicted the poet's soul."
Perhaps his hopeless love may have clouded his spirit, for this does happen in exceptional natures; or is it that, in truth, there are untold agonies, late or soon, in the hearts of all who have the power to move and to delight?
Certain it is that Petrarch possessed an immense attraction for almost every type of mind and character. He must indeed have been a man of infinite charm. He was the friend of kings, scholars, Popes, princes, soldiers, statesmen. He ardently championed the cause of Rienzi, and of the Emperor Charles IV.; for the idea of keeping up the succession of the Holy Roman Empire appealed powerfully to his imagination, and when that monarch gave up his campaign before he had made good his imperial claims on Italy, Petrarch wrote bitterly reproaching him for abandoning so sacred a heritage.
In Avignon, among hosts of devoted friends, were the Princes of the House of Colonna; and the friendship was not destroyed even when Petrarch sided warmly with Rienzi against the turbulent nobles of Rome, among whom the Colonna were pre-eminent.
But in spite of his popularity in the Papal city, Petrarch heartily detested this Gallic Babylon, as he called it, and loved to retire from its splendours to Vaucluse, not far off, where he tried to regain serenity in the silence of that strangely romantic spot. A sad-looking little house is still pointed out as the home of the poet; with a shady, wild garden running down to the waters of the Sorgue as they rush foaming from the narrow vale, whose stupendous cliffs are as gloomy and hope-destroying as St. Augustine himself!—St. Augustine as represented in the "Segreto" at any rate.
Here, in his beloved retreat, the poet seems to have perpetually tormented himself with reflections about the vanity of life and the folly of human affections, as if the stern figure of his monitor were indeed still shadowing his spirit. But the saint, for all his arguments, cannot conquer the poet's nature, or free him from what he calls the adamantine chains that bind him to Love and Fame.
"These charm while they destroy," he makes the saint declare.
"What have I done to you?" Petrarch exclaims, "that you should deprive me of my most splendid preoccupations and condemn to eternal darkness the brightest part of my soul?"
It is in the grip of his splendid preoccupations that one sees him oftenest.
Petrarch's parents were forced to leave Florence, where his father was a notary, by the same revolution that exiled Dante, and after some wanderings they fixed themselves at Avignon, sending the poet to study jurisprudence at Montpellier, close at hand. It was on his return to the Papal city, after the death of his parents, that he saw Laura for the first time.
Judging by the sonnets, he met her fairly often afterwards in Avignon, but never with any hope of a return for his passion.
A glance, a word of greeting at most, were all his reward, but out of these he appears to have woven a sort of painful joy. His was an unquiet spirit. One feels it as almost a relief to read of his death and of his peaceful tomb at Arqua in the Euganæan hills above a clear and beautiful river. "It stands on the little square before the church where the peasants congregate at Mass-time—open to the skies, girdled by the hills and within hearing of the vocal stream."
It is a pathetic picture that is left in the mind at the last, as the poet writes from the sweet solitude of his garden at Parma, whither he had retired towards the end of his days, drawn, doubtless, to his native land, for which he had always a profound attachment.
"I