to the principal church, and there, in his episcopal robes, blessed the people, and delivered an eloquent discourse.  Petrarch beheld with admiration the dignified behaviour of the youthful prelate.  James Colonna, though accustomed to the wealth and luxury of Rome, came to the Pyrenean rocks with a pleased countenance.  “His aspect,” says Petrarch, “made it seem as if Italy had been transported into Gascony.”  Nothing is more beautiful than the patient endurance of our destiny; yet there are many priests who would suffer translation to a well-paid, though mountainous bishopric, with patience and piety.

The vicinity of the Pyrenees renders the climate of Lombes very severe; and the character and conversation of the inhabitants were scarcely more genial than their climate.  But Petrarch found in the bishop’s abode friends who consoled him in this exile among the Lombesians.  Two young and familiar inmates of the Bishop’s house attracted and returned his attachment.  The first of these was Lello di Stefani, a youth of a noble and ancient family in Rome, long attached to the Colonnas.  Lello’s gifted understanding was improved by study; so Petrarch tells us; and he could have been no ordinary man whom our accomplished poet so highly valued.  In his youth he had quitted his studies for the profession of arms; but the return of peace restored him to his literary pursuits.  Such was the attachment between Petrarch and Lello, that Petrarch gave him the name of Laelius, the most attached companion of Scipio.  The other friend to whom Petrarch attached himself in the house of James Colonna was a young German, extremely accomplished in music.  De Sade says that his name was Louis, without mentioning his cognomen.  He was a native of Ham, near Bois le Duc, on the left bank of the Rhine between Brabant and Holland.  Petrarch, with his Italian prejudices, regarded him as a barbarian by birth; but he was so fascinated by his serene temper and strong judgment, that he singled him out to be the chief of all his friends, and gave him the name of Socrates, noting him as an example that Nature can sometimes produce geniuses in the most unpropitious regions.

After having passed the summer of 1330 at Lombes, the Bishop returned to Avignon, in order to meet his father, the elder Stefano Colonna, and his brother the Cardinal.

The Colonnas were a family of the first distinction in modern Italy.  They had been exceedingly powerful during the popedom of Boniface VIII., through the talents of the late Cardinal James Colonna, brother of the famous old Stefano, so well known to Petrarch, and whom he used to call a phoenix sprung up from the ashes of Rome.  Their house possessed also an influential public character in the Cardinal Pietro, brother of the younger Stefano.  They were formidable from the territories and castles which they possessed, and by their alliance and friendship with Charles, King of Naples.  The power of the Colonna family