The Cardinal Colonna is dead, and my friends are all dispersed, excepting Socrates, who continues inviolably attached to Avignon.
"As to Vaucluse, I well know the beauties of that charming valley, and ten years' residence is a proof of my affection for the place.

I have shown my love of it by the house which I built there.

There I began my Africa, there I wrote the greater part of my epistles in prose and verse, and there I nearly finished all my eclogues.

I never had so much leisure, nor felt so much enthusiasm, in any other spot.

At Vaucluse I conceived the first idea of giving an epitome of the Lives of Illustrious Men, and there I wrote my Treatise on a Solitary Life, as well as that on religious retirement.