.
He travelled by slow stages into Italy, for he had no cause for haste.
At Pavia he wandered listlessly among the lecture halls.

What had once seemed to him the fine gold of eloquence was now only leaden rhetoric.
In his lodging at Florence he handled once again his treasures--his books from Ficino's press; his manuscripts, some from Byzantium yellow with age, some on clean white vellum new copied by his order; his busts and gems and intaglios.

What had become of that fervour with which he had been used to gaze on them?
What of that delicious world into which, with drawn curtains and a clear lamp, he could retire at will?
The brightness had died in the air.
He found his friends very full of quarrels.

There was a mighty feud between two of them on the respective merits of Cicero and Quintilian as lawgivers in grammar, and the air was thick with libels.

Another pair wrangled in public over the pre-eminence of Scipio and Julius Caesar; others on narrow points of Latinity.