In writing to our poet, at Avignon, the Bishop rallied Petrarch on the imaginary existence of the object of his passion.

Some stupid readers of the Bishop's letter, in subsequent times, took it into their heads that there was a literal proof in the prelate's jesting epistle of our poet's passion for Laura being a phantom and a fiction.

But, possible as it may be, that the Bishop in reality suspected him to exaggerate the flame of his devotion for the two great objects of his idolatry, Laura and St.
Augustine, he writes in a vein of pleasantry that need not be taken for grave accusation.

"You are befooling us all, my dear Petrarch," says the prelate; "and it is wonderful that at so tender an age (Petrarch's tender age was at this time thirty-one) you can deceive the world with so much art and success.

And, not content with deceiving the world, you would fain deceive Heaven itself.