But the epistle, upon the whole, is manly and eloquent.
A few days after despatching his letter to the Emperor, Petrarch made a journey to Verona to see his friends.

There he wrote to Socrates.

In this letter, after enumerating the few friends whom the plague had spared, he confesses that he could not flatter himself with the hope of being able to join them in Provence.

He therefore invokes them to come to Italy, and to settle either at Parma or at Padua, or any other place that would suit them.

His remaining friends, here enumerated, were only Barbato of Sulmona, Francesco Rinucci, John Boccaccio, Laelius, Guido Settimo, and Socrates.
Petrarch had returned to Padua, there to rejoin the Cardinal of Boulogne.