Even we, in the present day, can remember when the distance of fourteen miles presented a troublesome journey.

The few guests who came, to him could not expect very exquisite dinners, cooked by the brown old woman and her husband the fisherman; and, though our poet had a garden consecrated to Bacchus, he had no cellar devoted to the same deity.

His few friends, therefore, who visited him, thought their angel visits acts of charity.
If he saw his friends seldom, however, he had frequent visitants in strangers who came to Vaucluse, as a place long celebrated for its natural beauties, and now made illustrious by the character and compositions of our poet.

Among these there were persons distinguished for their rank or learning, who came from the farthest parts of France and from Italy, to see and converse with Petrarch.

Some of them even sent before them considerable presents, which, though kindly meant, were not acceptable.
Vaucluse is in the diocese of Cavaillon, a small city about two miles distant from our poet's retreat.