On leaving Italy, Petrarch gratified his avidity for travel by a long journey through Spain to Cadiz, and northward, by the sea-shore, as far as the coasts of England. He went to escape from the chains which awaited him at Avignon; and, seeking a cure for the wounds which his heart had received, he endeavoured to obtain health and liberty by visiting distant countries. It is thus that he speaks of this tour in his letters. But, though he went far, he did not stay long; for, on the l6th of August of the same year, he returned to Avignon. He came back with the same feelings; and grew more and more dissatisfied with himself, and the state of agitation and slavery to which the vicinity of Laura reduced him. The young wife was now the mother of a family, and more disinclined than ever to tarnish her good name, or to endanger her peace, by the sad vicissitudes of illicit passion. Disturbed, and struggling with himself, Petrarch sought various remedies for the ill that beset him. [Sidenote: April 20. 1336. Ætat. 32.] Among other attempts to divert his thoughts, he made an excursion to Mont Ventoux, one of the highest mountains Europe; which, placed in a country where every other hill is much lower, commands a splendid and extensive view. There is a letter of his to his friend and spiritual director, father Dionisio Robertis, of San Sepolcro, whom he knew in Paris, giving an account of the expedition. It was a work of labour to climb the precipitous mountain; with difficulty, and after many fatiguing deviations from the right road, he reached its summit. He gazed around on the earth, spread like a map below; he fixed his eyes on the Alps, which divided him from Italy; and then, reverting to himself, he thought--"Ten years ago you quitted Bologna: how are you changed since then!" The purity of the air, and the vast prospect before him, gave subtlety and quickness to his perceptions. He reflected on the agitation of his soul, but not yet arrived in port, he felt that he ought not to let his thoughts dwell on the tempests that shook his nature. He thought of her he loved, not, as before, with hope and animation, but with a sad struggling love, for which he blushed. He would have changed his feeling to hate; but such an attempt were vain: he felt ashamed and desperate, as he repeated the verse of Ovid-- "Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo."