The pleasure with which he undertook the journey made him suppose that he could support it.

But when he reached Ferrara he fell down in a fit, in which he continued thirty hours, without sense or motion; and it was supposed that he was dead.

The most violent remedies were used to restore him to consciousness, but he says that he felt them no more than a statue.
Nicholas d'Este II., the son of Obizzo, was at that time Lord of Ferrara, a friend and admirer of Petrarch.

The physicians thought him dead, and the whole city was in grief.

The news spread to Padua, Venice, Milan, and Pavia.