residence, but the portrait over the door of the bedroom inside of the chamber, was of his own time, and taken from him—­the custodian said.  As it seemed to look like all the Petrarchian portraits, I did not remark it closely, but rather turned my attention to the walls of the chamber, which were thickly over-scribbled with names.  They were nearly all Italian, and none English so far as I saw.  This passion for allying one’s self to the great, by inscribing one’s name on places hallowed by them, is certainly very odd; and (I reflected as I added our names to the rest) it is, without doubt, the most impertinent and idiotic custom in the world.  People have thus written themselves down, to the contempt of sensible futurity, all over Petrarch’s house.

The custodian insisted that the bedroom was just as in the poet’s time; some rooms beyond it had been restored; the kitchen at its side was also repaired.  Crossing the passage-way, we now entered the dining-room, which was comparatively large and lofty, with a mighty and generous fire-place at one end, occupying the whole space left by a balcony-window.  The floor was paved with tiles, and the window-panes were round and small, and set in lead—­like the floors and window-panes of all the other rooms.  A gaudy fresco, representing some indelicate female deity, adorned the front of the fire-place, which sloped expanding from the ceiling and terminated at the mouth without a mantel-piece.  The chimney was deep, and told of the cold winters in the hills, of which, afterward, the landlady of the village inn prattled less eloquently.

From this dining-room opens, to the right, the door of the room which they call Petrarch’s library; and above the door, set in a marble frame, with a glass before it, is all that is mortal of Petrarch’s cat, except the hair.  Whether or not the fur was found incompatible with the process of embalming, and therefore removed, or whether it has slowly dropped away with the lapse of centuries, I do not know; but it is certain the cat is now quite hairless, and has the effect of a wash-leather invention in the likeness of a young lamb.  On the marble slab below there is a Latin inscription, said to be by the great poet himself, declaring this cat to have been “second only to Laura.”  We may, therefore, believe its virtues to have been rare enough; and cannot well figure to ourselves Petrarch sitting before that wide-mouthed fire-place, without beholding also the gifted cat that purrs softly at his feet and nestles on his knees, or, with thickened tail and lifted back, parades, loftily round his chair in the haughty and disdainful manner of cats.

In the library, protected against the predatory enthusiasm of visitors by a heavy wire netting, are the desk and chair of Petrarch, which I know of no form of words to describe perfectly.  The front of the desk is of a kind of mosaic in cubes of wood, most of which have been carried away.  The chair is wide-armed and carved, but the bottom is gone, and it has been rudely repaired.  The custodian said Petrarch died in this chair while he sat writing at his desk in the little nook lighted by a single window opening on the left from his library.  He loved to sit there.  As I entered I found he had stepped out for a moment, but I know he returned directly after I withdrew.