Petrarch Canon at Lombez [pp. 802-812]

812 P~RARCK CAKON AT LOMBEl [Mar.,
to take me with him. He gently repulsed' me twice with his
hand, and then with altered tone and look replied:`No, this time
I do not wish you to accompany me. 1 looked at him attentively and saw death in his pallid, colorless face. Filled with terror
and gnef, I cried out, and as I awoke I heard the sound of my
voice dying away.... Twenty-five days after I received the
news of his death, and, comparing the dates, found he appeared to
me the very day he left this world for the enjoyment of a better,
as I hope and believe."
"With what pleasure," wrote he to his friend Lello, "I
looked forward to the day I thought near when I should, as he
had affectionately urged me to do, go from the Apennines to the
Pyrenees to present him with two humble but sincere proofs of
my veneration, the new cantos of my Africa and the Roman
laurel with which I had been unworthily crowned, as to which he
had congratulated me, testifying his joy in a poem of extreme
elegance. But God has frustrated my plan. I did not merit so
happy a day."
And he thus wrote Cardinal Colonna: "As a bishop your
brother showed the n~ost scrupulous exactitude...`. I recall
with pleasure his meekness in spite of his exalted rank, his modesty with such gifts of nature, his natural dignity and youthful
grace, his pious observance of the sacred rites, and a gravity old
men might have envied so young a bishop, without the hope of
acquiring it.... Two places that have nothing else in common
divide what remains here below of the departed. Rome preserves the high and imperishable renown of its citizen; Lombez
the venerable remains of its bishop, and never, if I am not mistaken, will Providence grant that church a more glorious honor
if you consent to leave them there for ever. But three years
after Bishop Colonna's death his remains were transported to
Rome. Petrarch then resigned his canonicate at Lombez. The
last tie that bound him to the place was severed. Some say he
revisited southwestern France later in life, when time had moderated his feelings and his chief inspiration was the thought of
death, which then seemed the refrain of all his sonnets, as in the
following: "Virgin, Star of our stormy sea, behold the sudden
blast that has overtaken me rudderless. I feel already the chill
of' death, but in thee my soul puts its confidence.`It is stained
with sin, I deny it not, but, 0 Virgin! I implore thee, let not the
enemy overwhelm me in the storm. Hasten, for my days are fly.
ing swift as an arrow. Death awaits me. Commend me, then, to
thy Son, that he may with thee receive my last sigh."