Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/161

Rh at that interview may not be told; and although what impression our poetess may have made upon the novelist is unknown, George Sand inspired Mrs. Browning with extremely favourable ideas. She described her as not "taller than I am," and Elizabeth Browning, we know, was very short and small. George Sand's complexion appeared to her a pale olive, her hair dark, nicely parted and gathered into a knot or bunch behind. She tells of her dark glowing eyes, low voice, noble countenance, quiet simple manners, restrained rather than ardent, graceful and kind behaviour, and simple attire. Altogether a most charming person, and one well worthy the friendship even of England's pure and noble poetess. They parted, never to meet again. The Brownings appear to have prolonged their stay in Paris for some months, and Miss Mitford received occasional letters from Mrs. Browning, as full of vivid word-painting as of yore when, as she says—"Before Mr. Browning stole her from me, we used to write to each other at least twice a week, and by dint of intimacy and frequency of communication could, I think, have found enough matter for a correspondence of twice a day. It was really talk, fireside talk, neither better nor worse, assuming necessarily a form of permanence-gossip daguerreotyped.

Notwithstanding Mrs. Browning's "terrible Republicanism," as Miss Mitford terms it, she acquired a truly marvellous belief in Louis Napoleon's goodness and genius. This belief once planted in her mind, nothing could erase or shake it; and as Miss Mitford, after having believed in an idealized First Napoleon, was fully prepared to see her ideal realised in a Third Napoleon, Mrs. Browning continued to fill her letters to her old friend with presumed evidences of the