Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/147

Rh in the great room of the palace in which they were living, a very small, very slight woman, with very long curls drooping forward, almost across the eyes, hanging down to the bosom, and quite concealing the pale small face, from which the piercing, enquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. Rising from her chair she put out cordially the thin, white hand of an invalid, and in a few moments they were pleasantly chatting, while the husband strode up and down the room, joining in the conversation with a vigour, humour, eagerness and affluence of curious lore which, with his trenchant thought and subtle sympathy, made him one of the most charming and inspiring of companions."

This same Transatlantic informant talks of having been, a few days later, with the Brownings and one or two others, to Vallombrosa, the whole party spending two days there together. "Mrs. Browning was still too much of an invalid to walk, but she sat under the great trees upon the lawn-like hillsides near the convent, or in the scats of the dusky convent chapel, while Robert Browning at the organ chased a fugue, or dreamed out upon the twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi."

In an undated letter to Miss Mitford, Mrs. Browning tells of a visit, doubtless the same just referred to, she made to the monastery of Vallombrosa, and of being dragged there in a grape basket, without wheels, drawn by two oxen, remarking that she and her maid were turned away by the monks "for the sin of womanhood."

"In all the conversation," continues the American acquaintance of Mrs. Browning, "she was so mild, and tender, and womanly, so true and intense and rich