[Footnote 101:  The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi’s monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with “Thought? nay, sirs, what shall follow was not thought.”]

[Footnote 102:  I have used here some passages already printed in my Studies in Literature.]

Chapter XIII

Poems on Classical Subjects

During these years, 1869-1878, Browning’s outward life maintained its accustomed ways.  In the summer of 1869 he wandered with his son and his sister, in company with his friends of Italian days, the Storys, in Scotland, and at Lock Luichart Lodge visited Lady Ashburton.[103] Three summers, those of 1870, 1872 and 1873 were spent at Saint-Aubin, a wild “un-Murrayed” village on the coast of Normandy, where Milsand occupied a little cottage hard by.  At night the light-house of Havre shot forth its beam, and it was with “a thrill” that Browning saw far off the spot where he had once sojourned with his wife.[104] “I don’t think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as here,” he wrote in August 1870.  Every morning, as Mme. Blanc (Th.  Bentzon) tells us, he might be seen “walking along the sands with the small Greek copy of Homer which was his constant companion.  On Sunday he went with the Milsands ... to a service held in the chapel of the Chateau Blagny, at Lion-sur-Mer, for the few Protestants of that region.  They were generally accompanied by a young Huguenot peasant, their neighbour, and Browning with the courtesy he showed to every woman, used to take a little bag from the hands of the strong Norman girl, notwithstanding her entreaties.”  The visit of 1870 was saddened by the knowledge of what France was suffering during the progress of the war.  He lingered as long as possible for the sake of comradeship with Milsand, around whose shoulder Browning’s arm would often lie as they walked together on the beach.[105] But communication with England became daily more and more difficult.  Milsand insisted that his friend should instantly return.  It is said by Mme. Blanc that Browning was actually suspected by the peasants of a neighbouring village of being a Prussian spy.  Not without difficulty he and his sister reached Honfleur, where an English cattle-boat was found preparing to start at midnight for Southampton.

Two years later Miss Thackeray was also on the coast of Normandy and at no great distance.  “It was a fine hot summer,” she writes, “with sweetness and completeness everywhere; the cornfields gilt and far-stretching, the waters blue, the skies arching high and clear, and the sunsets succeeding each other in most glorious light and beauty.”  Some slight misunderstanding on Browning’s part, the fruit of mischief-making gossipry, which caused constraint between him and his old friend was cleared away by the good offices of Milsand.  While Miss Thackeray sat writing, with shutters closed against