well understand how it should be that Petrarca wrote that no more than to
behold a book of Homer made him glad, and that he longed above all things
to clasp that great man in his arms.

Indeed, the poems and writings of Petrarca yielded us greater delights
than all the Greek and Roman heathen. Master Ulsenius had before now
lent them to Ann, and she like a bee from a flower would daily suck a
drop of honey from their store. Yet was there one testimony of
Petrarca's--who was, for sure, of all lovers the truest--which she loved
above all else. In the dreadful time of the Black Death which came as a
scourge on all the world, and chiefly on Italy, in the past century, the
lady to whom he had vowed the deepest and purest devotion, appeared to
him in a dream one fair spring morning as an angel of Heaven. And
whereas he inquired of her whether she were in life, she answered him in
these words: "See that thou know me; for I am she who led thee out of the
path of common men, inasmuch as thy young heart clung to me." And lo!
on that very sixth of April, which brought him that vision, one and
twenty years after that he had first beheld her, Laura had made a pious
end.

With beseeching eyes Ann would repeat to her best beloved, as they sat
together in the oriel bay, how that Laura had led her Petrarca from the
ways of common men; and it went to my heart to hear her entreat him, with
timid and yet fond and heartfelt prayer, to grant to her to be his Laura
and to guide him far from the beaten path, forasmuch as it was narrow and
low for his winged spirit. And while she thus spoke her great eyes had a
marvellous clear and glorious light, and when I looked in her face
wrapped in the veil of her mourning for her father, my spirit grew
solemn, as though I were in church. Herdegen must have felt this
likewise, methinks, for he would bend the knee before her and hide his