ed Mrs. Browning, "the place of nursery
maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in
this obstreperous London."

In the late September the Brownings crossed to Paris, Carlyle being their
traveling companion, and after an effort to secure an apartment near the
Madeleine, they finally established themselves in the Avenue des Champs
Elysees (No. 128), where they had pretty, sunny rooms, tastefully
furnished, with the usual French lavishness in mirrors and clocks,--all
for two hundred francs a month, which was hardly more than they had paid
for the dreary Grosvenor Street lodgings in London. Mrs. Browning was very
responsive to that indefinable exhilaration of atmosphere that pervades
the French capital, and the little Penini was charmed with the gayety and
brightness. Mrs. Browning enjoyed the restaurant dining, _a la carte_,
"and mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 'solution'
by Emile de Girardin," who suggested, it seems, "that the next President
of France should be a tailor." Meantime she writes to a friend that "the
'elf' is flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf on
each cheek." They found themselves near neighbors of Beranger, and
frequently saw him promenading the avenue in a white hat, and they learned
that he lived very quietly and "kept out of scrapes, poetical and
political." Mrs. Browning notes that they would like to know Beranger,
were the stars propitious, and that no accredited letter of introduction
to him would have been refused, but that they could not make up their
minds to go to his door and introduce themselves as vagrant minstrels. To
George Sand they brought a letter from Mazzini, and although they heard
she "had taken vows against seeing strangers," Mrs. Browning declared she
would not die, if she could help it, without meeting the novelist who had
so captivated her. Mazzini's letter, with one from themselves, was sent to
George Sand through mutual friends, and the following reply came:

Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, rue
Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encore
je n'en suis pas absolument certaine--mais je ferai tellement mon
possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera peut-etre un peu. Agreez
mille remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que
j'espere voir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez.

GEORGE SAND.

PARIS,