Charles did not answer the poet's letter immediately, but he entertained a profound admiration for him; and when he entered Italy, being at Mantua, he sent one of his esquires to Milan, to invite Petrarch to come to him. The poet immediately obeyed, though frost and snow rendered his journey slow and difficult. The emperor received him with the greatest kindness and distinction. Petrarch used the utmost freedom of speech in his exhortations to the emperor to deliver Italy. He made him a present of a collection of antique medals, among which was an admirable one of Augustus, saying to him, "These heroes ought to serve you as examples. The medals are dear to me: I would not part with them to any one but you. I know the lives and acts of the great men whom they represent: this knowledge is not enough for you; you ought to imitate them." Petrarch's admonitions were vain. After a progress through Italy, and the ceremony of his coronation at Rome; after having made a mere traffic of his power and prerogatives, Charles hastened to repass the Alps, and returned to Germany, as a contemporary historian observes "with a full purse, but shorn of honour." After the death of the bishop-lord Giovanni Visconti, Petrarch continued to reside at Milan under the protection of his nephew Galeazzo: he was sent by him at one time to Venice to negotiate a peace, and on another to Prague, on an embassy to the emperor Charles. [Sidenote: 1355. Ætat. 51.] Afterwards he was sent to Paris to congratulate king John on his return from his imprisonment in England: he was shocked, in travelling through France, to find that it had been laid waste by fire and sword. [Sidenote: 1360. Ætat. 56.] The invasion of the English had reduced the whole land to a frightful state of solitude; the fields were desolate, and no house was left standing, except such as were fortified. Paris presented a yet more painful spectacle; grass grew in the deserted streets; the sounds of gaiety and the silence of learning were exchanged for the tumult of soldiery and the fabrication of arms. Petrarch was well received, especially by the dauphin, Charles, who cultivated letters and loved literary men. Here, as in every other court he visited, the poet was solicited to remain; but he found the barbarism of Paris little congenial to his habits, and he hastened back to Italy.