"November 20
It rains, it hails, it strikes: I think I resign myself to necessity, and benefit from this day of hell by writing to you. - Six or seven days ago one went on pilgrimage. I saw Nature more beautiful than ever. Teresa, her father, Odoardo, little Isabellina, and I went to visit Petrarch's house in Arquà. Arquà is distant, as you know, four miles from my house; but for more shortening of the journey we took the path of the erta. The most beautiful day of autumn was just opening. It seemed that Night followed by darkness and stars fled from the Sun, which came out in its immense splendor from the clouds of the east, almost dominating the universe; and the universe smiled. The golden clouds, painted in a thousand colors, rose up the vault of the sky, which all serene showed almost to open to spread over mortals the cares of the Deity. I greeted at every step the family of flowers and grasses that little by little lifted their heads bowed by the frost. The trees whispering softly, made the transparent drops of dew flicker against the light; while the winds of dawn shaved the overflowing mood from the plants. You would have heard a solemn harmony spread confusingly among the forests, the augurs, the herds, the rivers, and the labors of men: and meanwhile breathed the fragrant air of the exhalations that the earth exultant with pleasure sent from the valleys and mountains to the Sun, Nature's senior minister. [...] We were already near Arquà, and as we descended the grassy slope, the little villages that had previously been seen dispersed throughout the subject valleys were fading and fading from view. At last we found ourselves at an avenue bordered on one side by poplars that quivering let fall on our heads the most yellowish leaves, and overshadowed on the other side by very tall oaks, which with their silent opacity made a contrast to that pleasant green of the poplars. Tractually the two opposite rows of trees were joined by various branches of wild vines, which curving formed as many festoons softly stirred by the morning wind. Teresa then paused and looked around: "Oh how many times," she burst out, "I have lain in these grasses and under the cool shade of these oaks! I often used to come here in the evening with my mother." She kept silent and turned back, saying that she wanted to wait for Isabella, who had lingered a little longer with us; but I suspected that she had left me to hide the tears that flooded her eyes, and that perhaps she could no longer hold back. [...] We continued our brief pilgrimage till there appeared whitening from the long The little house that once sheltered That great to whose fame the world is narrow, For which Laura had on earth heavenly honors. I approached it as if I were going to prostrate myself on the sepulchres of my fathers, and as one of those priests who tacitly and reverently wandered through the woods inhabited by the Ides. The sacred house of that supreme Italian is crumbling from the irreligion of those who possess so much treasure. The traveler will come in vain from distant lands to seek with divine wonder the harmonious room still of Petrarch's heavenly songs. Instead he will weep over a heap of ruins covered with nettles and wild grasses among which the solitary fox will have made his brood. [...] In the meantime I recited softly with my soul all love and harmony the song: Chiare, fresche, dolci acque; and the other: Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte; and the sonnet: Stiamo, Amore, a veder la gloria nostra; and how many more of those superhuman verses my agitated memory then knew how to suggest to my heart. [...] Good night, Lorenzo. Keep this letter: when Odoardo will take happiness with him, and I will no longer see Teresa, nor will his naive little sister joke on these knees, in those days of boredom in which we cherish even grief, we will reread these memories lying on the grass overlooking the solitude of Arquà, in the hour that the day is failing. The remembrance that Teresa was our friend will shave our tears. Let us treasure dear and gentle sentiments which will reawaken in us for all the years, which still sad and haunted advance us, the memory that we have not always lived in sorrow.
from "Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis," 1802
