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One advantage the Abbé’s theory certainly has, the production of an unanswerable reason why Petrarch did not marry Laura; but, on the other hand, his ecclesiastical orders might be a sufficient impediment. The Papal dispensation which might have relieved him of them must surely have relieved him of his preferments also; and if the story is authentic, the offer came in all probability from Clement VI., the Pope by whom he was chiefly favoured, who did not attain the tiara until 1342, fifteen years after his first acquaintance with Laura, when Laura’s health seems to have been much impaired, and he may well have thought the time gone by. The objections to his suit having been addressed to a married woman seem almost insurmountable. If his flame was Laura de Sade, she was the mother of a very numerous family, and it appears all but incredible that he should have inscribed so much verse to her both in her lifetime and after her death, and discussed his passion so freely in his Dialogae without the slightest allusion to husband or children; or that the identity of a lady holding so high a position, and celebrated in verses read all over Italy, should so long have remained obscure; or that he should have enjoyed such freedom of access to her as he evidently did. The idea, moreover, seems quite inconsistent with the tenor of the celebrated sonnet,Tranquillo porto avea mostrato Amore: