ed in their
expressions of enjoyment, Mr. Browning impulsively exclaimed: "Come back
and sup with us, do!" And Mrs. Browning, with the dismay of the housewife,
cried: "Oh, Robert, there is no supper, nothing but the remains of the
pie." To which the poet rejoined: "Then come back and finish the pie."

Mrs. Browning was deeply attached to Fanny Kemble. She describes her, at
this time, as "looking magnificent, with her black hair and radiant smile.
A very noble creature, indeed," added Mrs. Browning; "somewhat unelastic,
attached to the old modes of thought and convention, but noble in
qualities and defects.... Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous ... and her
house has the best society in Rome, and exquisite music, of course."

Mrs. Browning often joined her husband in excursions to galleries,
villas, and ruins; and when in the Sistine Chapel, on a memorable
festival, they heard "the wrong Miserere," she yet found it "very fine,
right or wrong, and overcoming in its pathos." M. Goltz, the Austrian
Minister, was an acquaintance whom the Brownings found "witty and
agreeable," and Mrs. Browning called the city "a palimpsest Rome," with
its records written all over the antique.

The sorrow of the Storys over the death of a little son shadowed Mrs.
Browning, and she feared for her own Penini, but as the winter went on she
joyfully wrote of him that he "had not dropped a single rose-leaf from his
cheeks," and with her sweet tenderness of motherly love she adds that he
is "a poetical child, really, and in the best sense. He is full of
sweetness and vivacity together, of imagination and grace," and she
pictures his "blue, far-reaching eyes, and the innocent face framed in
golden ringlets." Mrs. Kemble came to them two or three times a week, and
they had long talks, "we three together," records Mrs. Browning. Mr. Page
occupied the apartment just over that of the Brownings, and they saw much
of him. "His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle," exclaimed Mrs.
Browning. Page begged to paint a portrait of the poet, of which Mrs.
Browning said that he "painted a picture of Robert like an Italian, and
then presented it to me like a prince." The coloring was Venetian, and the
picture was at first considered remarkable, but its color has entirely
vanished now, so that it seems its painter was not successful in
surprising the secret of Titian. In the spring of 1910 Mr. Barrett
Browning showed this picture to some friends in his villa near