as moved to fear lest these works of the
heathen should tempt him to stray from the true faith, my soul found
comfort when he proved to us that so glorious a lamp of the Church as
Saint Augustine had followed them on many points. Also Herdegen had
written out many verses of Homer's great song from a precious written
book, and had learned to master them well from the teaching of the doctor
of Feltre. They were that portion in which a great hero in the fight, or
ever he goes forth to battle, takes leave of his wife and little son; and
to me and Ann it seemed so fine and withal so touching, that we could
well understand how it should be that Petrarca wrote that no more than to
behold a book of Homer made him glad, and that he longed above all things
to clasp that great man in his arms.

Indeed, the poems and writings of Petrarca yielded us greater delights
than all the Greek and Roman heathen. Master Ulsenius had before now lent
them to Ann, and she like a bee from a flower would daily suck a drop of
honey from their store. Yet was there one testimony of Petrarca's--who
was, for sure, of all lovers the truest--which she loved above all else.
In the dreadful time of the Black Death which came as a scourge on all
the world, and chiefly on Italy, in the past century, the lady to whom he
had vowed the deepest and purest devotion, appeared to him in a dream one
fair spring morning as an angel of Heaven. And whereas he inquired of her
whether she were in life, she answered him in these words: "See that thou
know me; for I am she who led thee out of the path of common men,
inasmuch as thy young heart clung to me." And lo! on that very sixth of
April, which brought him that vision, one and twenty years after that he
had first beheld her, Laura had made a pious end.

With beseeching eyes Ann would repeat to her best beloved, as they sat
together in the oriel bay, how that Laura had led her Petrarca from the
ways of common men; and it went to my heart to hear her entreat him, with
timid and yet fond and heartfelt prayer, to grant to her to be his Laura
and to guide him far from the beaten path, forasmuch as it was narrow and
low for his winged spirit. And while she thus spoke her great eyes had a
marvellous clear and glorious light, and when I looked in her face
wrapped in the veil of her mourning for her father, my spirit grew
solemn, as though I were in church. Herdegen must have felt this
likewise, methinks, for he would bend the