brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, or excess
Of glory obscured;"

but is a three-headed monster of loathly ugliness, with faces yellow
with envy, crimson with rage, and black with ignorance; not haughty,
splendid, defiant, but foul and loathly as sin itself.

PETRARCH

By ALICE KING

(1304-1374)

[Illustration: Petrarch.]

It was in the days of civil strife in Florence. The Republic, like the
fickle mistress that she was, was stripping and turning out of doors
her best servants, and was petting and clothing with honor her worst
ones. Among those who, driven by the decree of banishment, hurried out
of the city's southern gate were the parents of Francesco Petrarch.
They retired to the little town of Arezzo, and there he was born in
1304, soon after their banishment. As she looked at her boy, his
mother, Eletta, very likely mourned to think that he would not be able
in after life to boast of being a native of fair Florence. She did not
know that in future ages Florence was to count it among her highest
distinctions that this child was of Florentine race.

Francesco was hardly freed from his swaddling-clothes when his father,
with that restlessness peculiar to exiles, removed the whole family
from Arezzo to Pisa. There they stayed for about two years; and the
little fellow's first tottering, baby footsteps were traced on the
banks of the Arno. When he was three the decree of banishment was,
through the influence of friends in Florence, revoked toward the
Petrarch family, as far as Eletta and her son were concerned--and a
part of their property was restored to them. The father was glad to
secure to his dear ones a safer and more comfortable home than he
could find for them in his wanderings; and Eletta, though she wept at
parting from her husband, smiled again when relations and old familiar
companions crowded round her to admire her gallant boy.

She did not, however, stay long in the town. She withdrew to Ancisa, a
village about fourteen miles from Florence, and settled there on a
small estate belonging to her husband. This she did partly, perhaps,
to keep down her expenses, and partly, perhaps, to devote herself more
entirely to her son. Here his mother, who must have been a clever
woman in her way, breathed into the boy Petrarch that high religious
feeling which strengthened his whole life, and led him up the first
steps of the ladder of knowledge; and here he acquired that tast