Her hand, usually held up to her cheek, was
absolutely ghostlike. Her form was so small, and deeply imbedded in a
reclining-chair or couch-corner, that it amounted to nothing. The dead
Galileo could not possibly have had a wiser or more doubtfully
attested being as a neighbor. If the poor scientist had been there to
assert that Mrs. Browning breathed, he would probably have been
imprisoned forthwith by another incredulous generation. My mother
speaks, on her second visit to Rome, of the refreshment of Mr.
Browning's calls, and says that the sudden meetings with him gave her
weary nerves rest during the strain of my sister's illness. She could
not have rejoiced in his spirited loveliness more than the little girl
by her side, who sometimes languished for direct personal intercourse
in all the panorama of pictures and statues, and friends absorbed in
sight-seeing. I had learned to be grateful for art and ruins, if only
they were superlative of their kind. I put away a store of such in my
fancy. But Mr. Browning was a perfection which looked at me, and
moved vigorously! For many years he associated himself in my mind with
the blessed visions that had enriched my soul in Italy, and continued
to give it sustenance in the loneliness of my days when we again threw
ourselves upon the inartistic mercies of a New England village. He
grouped himself with a lovely Diana at the Vatican, with some of
Raphael's Madonnas and the statue of Perseus, with Beatrice Cenci and
the wildflowers of our journeys by vettura, besides a few other
faultless treasures deeply appreciated by me.
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