ADVENT OF SPRING IN THE SOUTH
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used to wander here in yearning and tumult. But have you ever found, poet, that your Virgil has at times become a perilous seducer for you?
PETRARCH: A perilous seducer, Sire? Perhaps you meant rather: A source of zeal and comfort? In him I have found the most joyful certainties when I was already wavering. . . ah, you do not know the terrors of my paths. . .
CHARLES IV.: They have led, from what I know, to the summits where a broad survey has entranced you, and where the wings of superhuman self-fathoming have borne your human attributes yonder close to the footstool of the divine throve, so that we Christians were at a loss even for the breath of anguish at so haughty a sin.
PETRARCH: But if I ascended from towns and valleys somewhere to the clouds, was it not for the mere reason that I could no longer live in the depths where it was close and narrow even to stifling? There were moments when I drank from the sponge seaked with vinegar and gall, without knowing whether my sacrifice would deliver a single soul.
CHARLES IV.: Your comparison is blasphemous. Too often you sin through the pride of your sorrow, as other people sin through the pride of their joy.
PETRARCH: Yes, pride of sorrow, pride of sorrowful loneliness. How should you, Sire,
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