When we marched into the salone, Browning was seated at the piano, playing (I think) a Toccata of Galuppi’s.  On seeing us, he brought his hands down with a great crash on the keyboard, seemed to reach us in one astonishing bound across the marble floor, and clapped Ibsen loudly on either shoulder, wishing him “the Merriest of Merry Christmases.”

Ibsen, under this sudden impact, stood firm as a rock, and it flitted through my brain that here at last was solved the old problem of what would happen if an irresistible force met an immoveable mass.  But it was obvious that the rock was not rejoicing in the moment of victory.  I was tartly asked whether I had not explained to Herr Browning that his guest did not understand English.  I hastily rectified my omission, and thenceforth our host spoke in Italian.  Ibsen, though he understood that language fairly well, was averse to speaking it.  Such remarks as he made in the course of the meal to which we presently sat down were made in Norwegian and translated by myself.

Browning, while he was carving the turkey, asked Ibsen whether he had visited any of the Venetian theatres.  Ibsen’s reply was that he never visited theatres.  Browning laughed his great laugh, and cried “That’s right!  We poets who write plays must give the theatres as wide a berth as possible.  We aren’t wanted there!” “How so?” asked Ibsen.  Browning looked a little puzzled, and I had to explain that in northern Europe Herr Ibsen’s plays were frequently performed.  At this I seemed to see on Browning’s face a slight shadow—­so swift and transient a shadow as might be cast by a swallow flying across a sunlit garden.  An instant, and it was gone.  I was glad, however, to be able to soften my statement by adding that Herr Ibsen had in his recent plays abandoned the use of verse.

The trouble was that in Browning’s company he seemed practically to have abandoned the use of prose too.  When, moreover, he did speak, it was always in a sense contrary to that of our host.  The Risorgimento was a theme always very near to the great heart of Browning, and on this occasion he hymned it with more than his usual animation and resource (if indeed that were possible).  He descanted especially on the vast increase that had accrued to the sum of human happiness in Italy since the success of that remarkable movement.  When Ibsen rapped out the conviction that what Italy needed was to be invaded and conquered once and for all by Austria, I feared that an explosion was inevitable.  But hardly had my translation of the inauspicious sentiment been uttered when the plum-pudding was borne into the room, flaming on its dish.  I clapped my hands wildly at sight of it, in the English fashion, and was intensely relieved when the yet more resonant applause of Robert Browning followed mine.  Disaster had been averted by a crowning mercy.  But I am afraid that Ibsen thought us both quite mad.