To this day the ruins of a small house are shown at Vaucluse, which tradition says was his habitation.
If his object was to forget Laura, the composition of sonnets upon her in this hermitage was unlikely to be an antidote to his recollections.
It would seem as if he meant to cherish rather than to get rid of his love.

But, if he nursed his passion, it was a dry-nursing; for he led a lonely, ascetic, and, if it were not for his studies, we might say a savage life.

In one of his letters, written not long after his settling at Vaucluse, he says, "Here I make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies.

My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold, or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament, and the rocks.

The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts.