In the same year, 1361, he married his daughter Francesca, now near the age of twenty, to Francesco di Brossano, a gentleman of Milan.  Petrarch speaks highly of his son-in-law’s talents, and of the mildness of his character.  Boccaccio has drawn his portrait in the most pleasing colours.  Of the poet’s daughter, also, he tells us, “that without being handsome, she had a very agreeable face, and much resembled her father.”  It does not seem that she inherited his genius; but she was an excellent wife, a tender mother, and a dutiful daughter.  Petrarch was certainly pleased both with her and with his son-in-law; and, if he did not live with the married pair, he was, at least, near them, and much in their society.

When our poet arrived at Padua, Francesco di Carrara, the son of his friend Jacopo, reigned there in peace and alone.  He had inherited his father’s affection for Petrarch.  Here, too, was his friend Pandolfo Malatesta, one of the bravest condottieri of the fourteenth century, who had been driven away from Milan by the rage and jealousy of Barnabo.

The plague, which still continued to infest Southern Europe in 1362, had even in the preceding year deprived our poet of his beloved friend Socrates, who died at Avignon.  “He was,” says Petrarch, “of all men the dearest to my heart.  His sentiments towards me never varied during an acquaintance of thirty-one years.”

The plague and war rendered Italy at this time so disagreeable to Petrarch, that he resolved on returning to Vaucluse.  He, therefore, set out from Padua for Milan, on the 10th of January, 1362, reckoning that when the cold weather was over he might depart from the latter place on his route to Avignon.  But when he reached Milan, he found that the state of the country would not permit him to proceed to the Alps.

The Emperor of Germany now sent Petrarch a third letter of invitation to come and see him, which our poet promised to accept; but alleged that he was prevented by the impossibility of getting a safe passage.  Boccaccio, hearing that Petrarch meditated a journey to the far North, was much alarmed, and reproached him for his intention of dragging the Muses into Sarmatia, when Italy was the true Parnassus.

In June, 1362, the plague, which had begun its ravages at Padua, chased Petrarch from that place, and he took the resolution of establishing himself at Venice, which it had not reached.  The course of the pestilence, like that of the cholera, was not general, but unaccountably capricious.  Villani says that it acted like hail, which will desolate fields to the right and left, whilst it spares those in the middle.  The war had not permitted our poet to travel either to Avignon or into Germany.  The plague had driven him out of Milan and Padua.  “I am not flying from death,” he said, “but seeking repose.”