Under the banners of Rhetoric are ranged Cicero, Geoffroy de Vinesauf, and Alain de Lisle.

It would require all Cicero's eloquence to persuade us that his comrades in the procession were quite worthy of his company.

The Nine Muses follow Petrarch's body; eleven poets, crowned with laurel, support the bier, and Minerva, holding the crown of Petrarch, closes the procession.
We have seen that Petrarch left Naples foreboding disastrous events to that kingdom.

Among these, the assassination of Andrew, on the 18th of September, 1345, was one that fulfilled his augury.

The particulars of this murder reached Petrarch on his arrival at Avignon, in a letter from his friend Barbato.
From the sonnets which Petrarch wrote, to all appearance, in 1345 and 1346, at Avignon or Vaucluse, he seems to have suffered from those fluctuations of Laura's favour that naturally arose from his own imprudence.