p to the woman whom Petrarch's verses
had made famous and kissed her on the eyes. It was a prince's privilege.
Petrarch related the occurrence in a sonnet. It was incidents of this
character that form the bundle of poetry that immortalized them both.

Sometimes he rebelled. He went away, travelled, studied, worked. Whatever
he did, where-ever he were, always, in haunting constancy, she was before
him. Always her presence inhabited his eyes. He tried to vanquish the love
of woman in the love of God. In the struggle it was he who was defeated.
Even age, even death could not aid him. Laura ultimately had nine
children. She was growing old, certainly she was worn. To Petrarch always
she was in the first festival of her beauty.

Blessed be the day and the month and the year,
And the season, the hour, the minute,
And the fair land and the spot itself where
Her beautiful eyes subjected my spirit.

It was that which he had ever before him. It was that which made him what
he was, the foremost personality of his day. It was that which
distinguished him from other poets. Unlike anybody, every one wanted to
resemble him. It was love that did it. Dante told of love with an
intensity that was divine. Petrarch wrote with a comprehensiveness that
was human. There have been thousands of poets and but one Dante, myriads
of lovers and but one Petrarch. Whether Laura deserved his devotion must
be a matter of opinion. This alone is obvious. She made his life a combat
which antiquity would not have understood, which chivalry would not have
appreciated and which Dante did not experience. In antiquity love had for
form but the senses. That form chivalry draped with graces and Dante
dematerialized. In Petrarch, love was both of the flesh and of the spirit
in addition to being sincere. That was a great step. With him for the
first time there entered into history an honest man ardently in love with
an honest woman. To the superficial she has seemed but a coquette and he
merely sentimental. He were perhaps better regarded as creative, the
founder of the real love which is the love of the heart, the "_amour
eternel en un moment concu_."

The quality of Laura's love, whether she loved him or whether she did not,
whether for that matter she was capable of loving at all, whether on the
other hand while loving him wholly she, like the woman in the sonnet of
Arvers who inspired the "_amour eternel_" preferred to remain "piously
f