God bless you, and good bye.  Robert bids me give you his love (of the earnestest), and I have leave from you (have I not?) to be always affectionately yours,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

The journey to Paris was effected at the end of September, and for about nine months they pitched their tent at No. 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees.  It was a fortunate time to be in Paris for those who had no personal nervousness, and liked to be near the scene of great events—­a most anxious time for any who were alarmed at disturbances, or took keenly to heart the horrors of street fighting.  Fortunately for the Brownings, they, whether by temperament or through their Italian experiences, were not unduly disturbed at revolutions, while the horrors of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat were, no doubt, only partly known to Mrs. Browning at the time, and were palliated to her by the view she took of Napoleon’s character.  She had not, it is true, raised him as yet to the pinnacle on which his intervention on behalf of Italy subsequently caused her to place him, but (perhaps owing to what Mr. Kenyon called her ‘immoral sympathy with power’) she was always disposed to put a favourable construction on his actions, and the coup d’etat was finally whitewashed for her by the approbation which the plebiscite of December 20 gave to his assumption of supreme power.  Her views are, however, so fully set forth in her own letters that they need not be detailed here.  For her husband’s opinion of the character of Louis Napoleon, at least as it appeared to him when looking back after the lapse of years, it is only necessary to refer to ’Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.’

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:  October 21, [1851].

But didn’t you, dearest friend, get ‘Casa Guidi’ and the portrait of Madme de Goethe, left for you in the London house?  I felt a want of leaving a word of adieu with these, and then the chaotic confusion in which we left England stifled the better purpose out of me.

With such mixed feelings I went away.  Leaving love behind is always terrible, but it was not all love that I left, and there was relief in the state of mind with which I threw myself on the sofa at Dieppe—­yes, indeed.  Robert felt differently from me for once, as was natural, for it had been pure joy to him with his family and his friends, and I do believe he would have been capable of never leaving England again, had such an arrangement been practicable for us on some accounts.  Oh England!  I love and hate it at once.  Or rather, where love of country ought to be in the heart, there is the mark of the burning iron in mine, and the depth of the scar shows the depth of the root of it.  Well, I am writing you an amusing letter to-day, I think.  After all, I wasn’t made to live in England, or I should