Now will you be sick of my literature; but you liked to hear, you said.  If you would see, besides, I would show you what George sent me the other day, a number of the ‘National Magazine,’ with the most hideous engraving, from a medallion, you could imagine—­the head of a ‘strong-minded’ giantess on the neck of a bull, and my name underneath!  Penini said, ’It’s not a bit like; it’s too old, and not half so pretty’—­which was comforting under the trying circumstance, if anything could comfort one in despair....

Your ever most affectionate
BA.

* * * * *

To Miss Browning

[Florence:  February 1857.]

My dearest Sarianna,—­I am delighted, and so is Robert, that you should have found what pleases you in the clock.  Here is Penini’s letter, which takes up so much room that I must be sparing of mine—­and, by the way, if you consider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, who has been taking most patient pains with him indeed.  You will see how the little curly head is turned with carnival doings.  So gay a carnival never was in our experience—­for until last year (when we were absent) all masks had been prohibited, and now everybody has eaten of the tree of good and evil till not an apple was left.  Peni persecuted me to let him have a domino, with tears and embraces; he ’almost never in all his life had had a domino,’ and he would like it so.  Not a black domino—­no; he hated black—­but a blue domino, trimmed with pink! that was his taste.  The pink trimming I coaxed him out of; but for the rest I let him have his way, darling child; and certainly it answered, as far as the overflow of joy in his little heart went.  Never was such delight.  Morning and evening there he was in the streets, running Wilson out of breath, and lost sight of every ten minutes.  ’Now, Lily, I do pray you not to call out “Penini!  Penini!"’ Not to be known was his immense ambition.  Oh, of course he thought of nothing else.  As to lessons, there was an absolute absence of wits.  All Florence being turned out into the streets in one gigantic pantomime, one couldn’t expect people to be wiser indoors than out.  For my part, the universal madness reached me sitting by the fire (whence I had not stirred for three months); and you will open your eyes when I tell you that I went (in domino and masked) to the great opera ball.  Yes, I did really.  Robert, who had been invited two or three times to other people’s boxes, had proposed to return this kindness by taking a box himself at the opera this night and entertaining two or three friends with gallantina and champagne.  Just as he and I were lamenting the impossibility of my going, on that very morning the wind changed, the air grew soft and mild, and he maintained that I might and should go.  There was no time to get a domino of my own (Robert himself had a beautiful one made, and I am having it metamorphosed into a black silk gown for