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