the one Cardinal, thought it unnecessary to report the pleasantries of the other.  But Petrarch, who had heard of them from another quarter, relates them himself to Bruni, and says:—­“I am not astonished.  This man loved me formerly, and I was equally attached to him.  At present he hates me, and I return his hatred.  Would you know the reason of this double change?  It is because he is the enemy of truth, and I am the enemy of falsehood; he dreads the liberty which inspires me, and I detest the pride with which he is swollen.  If our fortunes were equal, and if we were together in a free place, I should not call myself a phoenix; for that title ill becomes me; but he would be an owl.  Such people as he imagine, on account of riches ill-acquired, and worse employed, that they are at liberty to say what they please.”

In the letter which Bruni wrote to Petrarch, to apprize him of Cabassole’s departure, and of what he had said to the Pope in his favour, he gave him notice of the promotion of twelve new cardinals, whom Gregory had just installed, with a view to balance the domineering authority of the others.  “And I fear,” he adds, “that the Pope’s obligations to satiate those new and hungry comers may retard the effects of his good-will towards you.”  “Let his Holiness satiate them,” replied Petrarch; “let him appease their thirst, which is more than the Tagus, the Pactolus, and the ocean itself could do—­I agree to it; and let him not think of me.  I am neither famished nor thirsty.  I shall content myself with their leavings, and with what the holy father may think meet to give, if he deigns to think of me.”

Bruni was right.  The Pope, beset by applications on all hands, had no time to think of Petrarch.  Bruni for a year discontinued his correspondence.  His silence vexed our poet.  He wrote to Francesco, saying, “You do not write to me, because you cannot communicate what you would wish.  You understand me ill, and you do me injustice.  I desire nothing, and I hope for nothing, but an easy death.  Nothing is more ridiculous than an old man’s avarice; though nothing is more common.  It is like a voyager wishing to heap up provisions for his voyage when he sees himself approaching the end of it.  The holy father has written me a most obliging letter:  is not that sufficient for me?  I have not a doubt of his good-will towards me, but he is encompassed by people who thwart his intentions.  Would that those persons could know how much I despise them, and how much I prefer my mediocrity to the vain grandeur which renders them so proud!” After a tirade against his enemies in purple, evidently some of the Cardinals, he reproaches Bruni for having dwelt so long for lucre in the ill-smelling Avignon; he exhorts him to leave it, and to come and end his days at Florence.  He says that he does not write to the Pope for fear of appearing to remind him of his promises.  “I have received,” he adds, “his letter and Apostolic blessing; I beg you to communicate to his Holiness, in the clearest manner, that I wish for no more.”