He thought that what was not blamed in a greyheaded
monarch, might well be _excused _in a young man of private station. The
ascent of a mountain for its own sake was unheard of, and there could
be no thought of the companionship of friends or acquaintances.
Petrarch took with him only his younger brother and two country people
from the last place where he halted. At the foot of the mountain an old
herdsman besought him to turn back, saying that he himself had
attempted to climb it fifty years before, and had brought home nothing
but repentance, broken bones, and torn clothes, and that neither before
nor after had anyone ventured to do the same. Nevertheless, they
struggled forward and upward, till the clouds lay beneath their feet,
and at last they reached the top. A description of the view from the
summit would be looked for in vain, not because the poet was insensible
to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression was too
overwhelming. His whole past life, with all its follies, rose before
his mind; he remembered that ten years ago that day he had quitted
Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze towards his native
country; he opened a book which then was his constant companion, the
'Confessions' of St. Augustine, and his eye fell on the passage in the
tenth chapter, 'and men go forth, and admire lofty mountains and broad
seas, and roaring torrents, and the ocean, and the course of the stars,
and forget their own selves while doing so.
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