[Footnote 68:  The writer of this volume many years ago pointed out to Browning his transposition of the chronological places of Fra Lippo Lippi and Masaccio ("Hulking Tom”) in the history of Italian art.  Browning vigorously maintained that he was in the right; but recent students do not support his contention.  At the same time an error in Transcendentalism, where Browning spoke of “Swedish Boehme,” was indicated.  He acknowledged the error and altered the text to “German Boehme.”]

[Footnote 69:  Browning maintained to Gavan Duffy that his treatment of the Cardinal was generous.]

Chapter X

Close of Mrs Browning’s Life

When Men and Women was published in the autumn of 1855 the Brownings were again in Paris.  An impulsive friend had taken an apartment for them in the Rue de Grenelle, facing east, and in all that concerned comfort splendidly mendacious.  After some weeks of misery and illness Mrs Browning was conveyed to less glittering but more hospitable rooms in the Rue du Colisee by a desperate husband—­“That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face and respirator in woollen shawls.  No, he wouldn’t set me down even to walk up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down in a struggling bundle."[70] Happily the winter was of a miraculous mildness.  Mrs Browning worked Aurora Leigh in “a sort of furia,” and Browning set himself to the task—­a fruitless one as it proved—­of rehandling and revising Sordello:  “I lately gave time and pains,” he afterwards told Milsand in his published dedication of the poem, “to turn my work into what the many might,—­instead of what the few must—­like:  but after all I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it”—­proud but warrantable words.  Some of his leisure was given to vigorous and not unsuccessful efforts in drawing.  At the theatre he saw Ristori as Medea and admired her, but with qualifications.  At Monckton Milnes’s dinner-table he met Mignet and Cavour, and George Sand crowned with an ivy-wreath and “looking like herself.”  Mrs Browning records with pleasure that her husband’s hostility to the French government had waned; at least he admitted that he was sick of the Opposition.

In May 1856 tidings from London of the illness of Kenyon caused him serious anxiety; he would gladly have hastened to attend upon so true and dear a friend, but this Kenyon would not permit.  A month later he and Mrs Browning were in occupation of Kenyon’s house in Devonshire Place, which he had lent to them for the summer, but the invalid had sought for restoration of his health in the Isle of Wight.  On the day that Mr Barrett heard of his daughter’s arrival he ordered his family away from London.  Mrs Browning once more wrote to him, but the letter received no answer.  “Mama,” said little Pen earnestly, “if you’ve been very, very naughty I advise