No More Learning

Petrarch says that it is inconceivable how the city of Rome, whose
adjacent fields were untilled, and whose vineyards had been frozen the
year before, could for twelve months support such a confluence of
people. He extols the hospitality of the citizens, and the abundance of
food which prevailed; but Villani and others give us more disagreeable
accounts--namely, that the Roman citizens became hotel-keepers, and
charged exorbitantly for lodgings, and for whatever they sold. Numbers
of pilgrims were thus necessitated to live poorly; and this, added to
their fatigue and the heats of summer, produced a great mortality.

As soon as Petrarch, relieved by surgical skill from the wound in his
leg, was allowed to go out, he visited all the churches.

After having performed his duties at the jubilee, Petrarch returned to
Padua, taking the road by Arezzo, the town which had the honour of his
birth. Leonardo Aretino says that his fellow-townsmen crowded around
him with delight, and received him with such honours as could have been
paid only to a king.

In the same month of December, 1350, he discovered a treasure which made
him happier than a king. Perhaps a royal head might not have equally
valued it. It was a copy of Quintilian's work "De Institutione
Oratoria," which, till then, had escaped all his researches. On the very
day of the discovery he wrote a letter to Quintilian, according to his
fantastic custom of epistolizing the ancients. Some days afterwards, he
left Arezzo to pursue his journey. The principal persons of the town
took leave of him publicly at his departure, after pointing out to him
the house in which he was born. "It was a small house," says Petrarch,
"befitting an exile, as my father was. " They told him that the
proprietors would have made some alterations in it; but the town had
interposed and prevented them, determined that the place should remain
the same as when it was first consecrated by his birth. The poet related
what had been mentioned to a young man who wrote to him expressly to ask
whether Arezzo could really boast of being his birthplace.
Petrarch
added, that Arezzo had done more for him as a stranger than Florence as
a citizen. In truth, his family was of Florence; and it was only by
accident that he was born at Arezzo. He then went to Florence, where he
made but a short stay. There he found his friends still alarmed about
the accident which had befallen him in his journey to Rome, the news of
which he had communicated to Boccaccio.

Petrarch went on to Padua. On approaching it, he perceived a universal
mourning. He soon learned the foul catastrophe which had deprived the
city of one of its best masters.

Jacopo di Carrara had received into his house his cousin Guglielmo.
Though the latter was known to be an evil-disposed person, he was
treated with kindness by Jacopo, and ate at his table. On the 21st of
December, whilst Jacopo was sitting at supper, in the midst of his
friends, his people and his guards, the monster Guglielmo plunged a
dagger into his breast with such celerity, that even those who were
nearest could not ward off the blow. Horror-struck, they lifted him up,
whilst others put the assassin to instant death.

The fate of Jacopo Carrara gave Petrarch a dislike for Padua, and his
recollections of Vaucluse bent his unsettled mind to return to its
solitude; but he tarried at Padua during the winter. Here he spent a
great deal of his time with Ildebrando Conti, bishop of that city, a man
of rank and merit. One day, as he was dining at the Bishop's palace, two
Carthusian monks were announced: they were well received by the Bishop,
as he was partial to their order. He asked them what brought them to
Padua. "We are going," they said, "to Treviso, by the direction of our
general, there to remain and establish a monastery.