Such an employment scarcely suited one, who, for the sake of freedom, had declined the highest honours of the catholic church. Petrarch testified great gratitude for the restitution of his property, but passed over their offered professorship in silence. Instead of repairing, as he had been invited, to Florence, he set out to revisit Avignon and Vaucluse. "I had resolved," he writes, "to return here no more; but my desires overcame my resolution, and, in justification of my inconstancy, I have nothing to allege but the necessity I felt for solitude. In my own country I am too well known, too much courted, too greatly praised. I am sick of adulation; and that place becomes dear to me, where I can live to myself alone, abstracted from the crowd, unannoyed by the voice of fame. Habit, which is a second nature, has rendered Vaucluse my true country." His son accompanied him on this occasion. The boy was now fourteen years of age: he was quiet and docile; but invincibly repugnant to learning, to the ne slight mortification of his father, who vainly tried, by reprehension, raillery, and sarcasm, to awaken emulation in his mind. When Petrarch arrived at Avignon, Clement VI, was very ill, and expected to die. He asked the poet's opinion concerning his disorder; and Petrarch wrote him a letter to give him his advice with regard to the choice of a physician, entreating him to adhere to one, as affording a better prospect, where all was chance, of having his malady understood. The learned body of medical men was highly offended by this letter: they attacked the writer with acrimony; and Petrarch replied in a style of vituperation, little accordant with his usual mild manner. He was highly esteemed in the papal court, and consulted by the four cardinals, deputed to reform the government of Rome; and was again solicited to accept the place of apostolic secretary, which he again refused. "I am content," he said, in reply to his friend the cardinal Talleirand: "I desire nothing more. My health is good; labour renders me cheerful; I have every kind of book; and I have friends, whom I consider the most precious blessing of life, if they do not seek to deprive me of my liberty." This letter was written from Vaucluse, Petrarch's heart had opened to a thousand sad and tender emotions, when he returned to the valley which had so frequently heard his laments: his sonnets on his return to Provence breathe the softest spirit of sadness and devoted love. He gladly took refuge in his former home from the vices and turbulence of Avignon. He renewed the wandering lonely life he had lived twelve years before. The old peasant still lived with his aged wife; and the poet amused himself with improvements in his garden, which an inundation of the Sorgue overwhelmed and destroyed.