In fine, he institutes as his heir and residuary legatee, Francesco di Borsano, residing at Milan. He names “a small property he has near Vaucluse” of which he desires to make a hospital for the poor, and if this could not be done he devises it to the son of Raymond de Clermont, surnamed Moneto. There are other unimportant clauses, after which comes the date, signature, and names of witnesses; he adds to it, however, a request to his heir to write as soon as possible after his death to his brother--a Carthusian in a convent at Marseilles (_in conventu de Materino_)--and to propose to either pay down to him a sum of 100 gold florins or an annuity of ten, as he might please. The whole terminates with these words: _Ego Franciscus Petrarca scripsi, qui testamentum aliud fecissem, si essem dives, ut vulgus insanum putat_. Curious and suggestive as is this relic, the illustrious reformer of philosophy, eloquence, poetry, and--shall we not even add--of love, has left a yet more engaging clew to his grand character, not only in his simple and almost _naïf_ “Epistle to Posterity,” but in a third paper consisting of the private memorandum written in the fly-leaf of his Virgil, evidently the outpouring of his heart and intended for no human eye. The concluding lines are touching in the extreme. What, indeed, can be more sublime than the lifelong devotedness of such a soul as Petrarch’s to the noblest and most beautiful, because the most disinterested, of sentiments--an all-absorbing and unaltered, yet pure and passionless, affection, and though surviving its object, losing none of its intensity! “ ... This loss,” he says, writing of the death of Laura, “always present to my memory, will continually remind me that there is no state here below worthy to be called happy, and that it is time I should renounce the world since the dearest tie that linked me to it is snapped. I hope, by the help of Heaven, this resignation may become possible. My mind, in reverting to the past, will find that the solicitudes which occupied it were vain; the hope it cherished delusive; that the plans it formed were never to be realized, and could only lead to disappointment and distress.” Petrarch was found dead in his library, his head resting on an open book, on the 18th July, 1374. He was within two days of seventy. WILL OF SIR WALTER MANNEY (1371)