Honoured by all men, beloved by his friends, with whom he kept up a constant and affectionate correspondence, courted by monarchs, and refusing the offers made him of the highest preferment in the church, Petrarch spent his latter years in peace and independence. His chief source of care was derived from his son. The youth was at first modest and docile, but his disinclination to literature was so great, that he abhorred the very sight of books. As he grew older he became rebellious, and a separation ensued between him and his father, soon made up again on the submission of the young man and his promises of amendment. The poet's tranquillity was at last broken in upon by the wars of the Visconti, and the plague, which again ravaged Italy. It had spared Milan by a singular exemption in the year 1348, but during its second visitation it was more fatal to this city than to any other. Petrarch had to mourn the loss of many friends; and his son, who died at this time, was probably one of its victims. Petrarch records his death in his Virgil, in these words:--"He who was born for my trouble and sorrow, who while he lived was the cause of heavy care, and who dying, inflicted on me a painful wound, having enjoyed but few happy days in the course of his life, died A. D. 1361, at the age of twenty-five."[56] [Sidenote: 1361. Ætat. 57.] These combined causes induced Petrarch to take up his abode at Padua, of whose cathedral he was a canon. During the remainder of his life he usually spent the period of Lent there, and the summer at Pavia; which, belonging to Galeazzo Visconti, he visited as his guest. A great portion of his time also was passed at Venice: he had made the republic a present of his library, and a palace was decreed to him for its reception, in which he often resided. Andrea Dando was dead; his heart had been broken by the reverses which the republic suffered in its struggle with Genoa. Marino Faliero, who succeeded to him, had already met his fate; but the new doge, Lorenzo Celsi, was Petrarch's warm friend. During this year he gave his daughter Francesca, who was scarcely twenty years of age, in marriage to Francesco Brossano, a Milanese gentleman. She was gentle and modest, attached to her duties, and averse to the pleasures of general society: in person she resembled her father to a singular degree. Her husband had a pleasing exterior; his physiognomy was remarkably placid, his conversation was unassuming, and his manners mild and obliging. Petrarch was much attached to his son-in-law: the new married pair inhabited his house at Venice, and the domestic union was never disturbed to the end of his life.