This morning when I arrived here I ran across one of your servants by accident, and plied him, as those newly arrived from foreign parts are wont to do, with a thousand questions. He knew nothing, however, except that your noble brother, whom I was hastening to join, had gone on to Rome without me. On hearing this my anxiety to proceed suddenly abated. It is now my purpose to wait here until the heat too shall abate somewhat, and until I regain my vigour by a little rest. I had not realised that I had suffered from either source until I met your servant; no kind of weariness indeed is so keenly felt as that of the mind. If the journey promises to seem tedious to me I shall float down the Rhone. In the meantime I am glad to know that your faithful servant will see that this reaches you, and that you will know where I am. As for your brother, who was to be my guide, and who now (my disappointment must be my excuse for saying it) has deserted me, I feel that my expostulations must be addressed to him directly. I beg that you will see that the enclosed message[8] reaches him as soon as may be. Farewell. Remember your friend.
LYONS, August 9.
[1] Fam., i., 3, 4. The two letters in which Petrarch describes his journey to the north are here given together. The first is dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, June 21 [1333], and the second from Lyons, August 9, of the same year.
[2] This first letter closes here with a legend of Charles the Great which Petrarch heard at Aix-la-Chapelle.
[3] I.e., Aquisgrana.
[4] Sat., xv., 111.
[5] The context would seem to indicate (as Fracassetti and de Nolhac [op. cit., p. 148] assume) that Petrarch means that many copies of Ovid but none of Virgil were to be found at Cologne.
[6] Æneid, vi., 318 sq.
[7] Namely, to Constantinople, then to Milan, and finally to Cologne.