He complains in it of "mischievous people, who opened packets to read the letters contained in them, and copied what they pleased.

Proceeding in their licence, they even spared themselves the trouble of transcription, and kept the packets themselves." Petrarch, indignant at those violators of the rights and confidence of society, took the resolution of writing no more, and bade adieu to his friends and epistolary correspondence, "Valete amici, valete epistolae." Petrarch died a very short time after despatching this letter.

His biographers and contemporary authors are not agreed as to the day of his demise, but the probability seems to be that it was the 18th of July.
Many writers of his life tell us that he expired in the arms of Lombardo da Serigo, whom Philip Villani and Gianozzo Manetti make their authority for an absurd tradition connected with his death.

They pretend that when he breathed his last several persons saw a white cloud, like the smoke of incense, rise to the roof of his chamber, where it stopped for some time and then vanished, a miracle, they add, clearly proving that his soul was acceptable to God, and ascended to heaven.

Giovanni Manzini gives a different account.