_Love had at length a tranquil port displayed To travailed soul, long vexed by toil and teen, In calm maturity, where naked seen Is Vice, and Virtue in fair garb arrayed. Bare to her eyes my heart should now be laid, Disquieted no more their peace serene-- O Death! what harvest of long years hath been Ruin by thee in one brief moment made! The hour when unreproved I might invoke Her chaste ear’s favour, and disburden there My breast of fond and ancient thought, drew nigh: And she, perchance, considering as I spoke Each bloomless face and either’s silvered hair, Some blessed word had uttered with a sigh._ The thought manifestly is, that if Laura had lived a short time longer their intimacy would have given no occasion for scandal. This might be true of an unmarried lady or a widow, hardly of a wife. The sonnet also proves that Petrarch and Laura were nearly of an age, refuting Vellutello’s opinion on this point. Salvatore Betti, moreover, has found another Laura, fulfilling, in his estimation, all requisites as well as the Abbé de Sade’s. It must, notwithstanding, be acknowledged that there is one piece of documentary evidence almost sufficient to prove the Abbé’s theory in the teeth of all objections, could we but be certain of its genuineness. This is the will of Laura de Sade, made in a condition of extreme sickness on April 3, 1348. We know on Petrarch’s own authority that his Laura died on April 6, for the genuineness of the note in his Virgil where he records this fact is now regarded as incontestable. That two ladies of the name of Laura were dying at or near Avignon at the same time is clearly improbable. But is the will itself authentic? or may it not have been altered or interpolated? The Abbé cites it as a document in his family archives; its existence is attested by several persons in the eighteenth century; but it does not appear to have been submitted to the scrutiny of any expert, nor can we learn whether such an examination has ever been made since, or whether the testament is now producible[7]. Should its authenticity ever be demonstrated, but hardly otherwise, we shall be almost compelled to embrace a belief liable in every other point of view to formidable objections. Although Laura, as depicted by Petrarch, is the most ethereal feminine ideal ever conceived, his passion was certainly not of the Platonic kind. The contrary has been asserted, but is contradicted by every page of the _Canzoniere_, which is full of reproaches to Laura for her cruelty, incomprehensible if she was not withholding very substantial favours. He certainly did not want for encouragements of a more spiritual nature: