He would go back to Avignon.
He went back; he saw Laura; she saw him, and passing him with a swift glance of recognition moved on. At sight of her his knees became weak, his heart seemed to stop and he leaned against a pillar for support. That night he eased his soul with a sonnet.
To his great embarrassment he found he had not mastered his passion—it was now mastering him. He tells us all this at length, and he told it to Laura, too.
His health began to decline, and his physician advised that he move to the country. And so we find him taking a course of solitude as a cure for love. He moved to Vaucluse, a hamlet fifteen miles from the city. Some of the old-time biographies tried to show that Laura visited him there in his solitude, and that was the reason he lived there. It is now believed that such stories were written for the delectation of the Hearst Syndicate, and had no basis in fact. The only way Petrarch ever really met Laura was in imagination.
Boccaccio, a contemporary and friend of Petrarch, declared that Laura had no existence outside of the imagination of the poet. But Boccaccio was a poet with a roistering proclivity, and truth to such a one in a love-affair is out of the question. Lies and love, with a certain temperament, go hand in hand. Possibly the absurd position of modern civilization towards the love-emotions has much to do with this. We have held that in human love there was something essentially base and bad, and so whenever a man or a woman become involved in Cupid's meshes they are sudden and quick in swearing an alibi, no matter what the nature of the attachment may be.
Boccaccio had to defend himself continually from charges, which most people knew were true, and so by habit he grew to deny everything, not only for himself, but for his friends. The poet needs solitude and society, in right proportions of course.
Petrarch lived at Vaucluse for ten years, making occasional trips to various capitals. Of his solitary life he says:
Here at Vaucluse I make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices which have so transported my soul; they hear nothing but the lowing of the cattle, the bleating of the sheep, the warbling of the birds, and the murmurs of the river.
I keep silence from noon till night. There is no one to converse with; for the people, employed in spreading their nets, or tending their vines and orchards, are no great adepts at conversation. I often content myself with the dry bread of the fisherman, and even eat it with pleasure. Nay, I almost prefer it to white bread. This old fisherman, who is as hard as iron, earnestly remonstrates against my manner of life; and assures me that I can not long hold out. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is easier to accustom one's self to a plain diet than to the luxuries of the feast. I am fond of the fish with which this stream abounds, and I sometimes amuse myself with spreading the nets. As to my dress, there is an entire change; you would take me for a laborer or a shepherd.
My mansion resembles that of Cato or Fabricius. My whole house-establishment consists of myself, my old fisherman and his wife, and a dog. My fisherman's cottage is near to mine; when I want him I call, when I no longer need him, he returns to his cottage. I have made two gardens that please me wonderfully. I do not think they are equaled in all the world. And I must confess to you a more than female weakness with which I am haunted. I am positively angry that there is anything so beautiful out of Italy.