ADVENT OF SPRING IN THE SOUTH
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may sinfully enervate yourself, rolling them ever afresh to the summit?
PETRARCH: Ah, none at all. On Virgil's fields blossom the herbs of deliverance.
CHARLES IV. (with a touch of irony) : Haply I, too, could cull them, if indeed, in so doing, I did not become a heretic.
PETRARCH: Sire, man of mighty spirit and noble heart, come unto me, come with me, confide in me! Across the centuries we clasp the hands of another, of a courageous stock who loved life and not death, who yearned for heroism and did not writhe in humility, a race of comrades, brothers, forebears. All that is great in the world was fashioned by these heroes, the men of the South, the Romans and the sons of Romans, the heirs of the language of Virgil. Barbarians silenced them, humbled them, hounded them out, and you, an heir of Augustus, surely do not long to be a barbarian. There is no life except in the South, not among the ruins, but in our own Roman realm. Your North is an evil dream, dark horror, which has saturated your veins with the blood of your mother. Your kindly favour, Sire, invites me ever afresh to your Northern city, which by your wisdom and love you have transformed into a wonderful legend; I desire, I pine, I vow to come to you. Something lures me there almost inconceivably—the endeavour to per-
