Tell Dall’ Ongaro that his friend M. Carl Gruen had enough of me in one visit.  He never came again, though I prayed him to come.  I have not been equal to receiving in the evening, and perhaps he expected an invitation.  I go to bed at eight on most nights.  I’m the rag of a Ba.  Yet I am stronger, and look much so, it seems to me.  Mr. Story is doing Robert’s bust, which is likely to be a success.[103] Hatty brought us a most charming design for a fountain for Lady Marion Alford.  The imagination is unfolding its wings in Hatty.  She is quite of a mind to spend the summer with you at Florence or elsewhere.  The Storys talk of Switzerland....

Andersen (the Dane) came to see me yesterday—­kissed my hand, and seemed in a general verve for embracing.  He is very earnest, very simple, very childlike.  I like him.  Pen says of him, ’He is not really pretty.  He is rather like his own ugly duck, but his mind has developed into a swan.’

That wasn’t bad of Pen, was it?  He gets on with his Latin too.  And, Isa, he has fastened a half-franc to his button-hole, for the sake of the beloved image, and no power on earth can persuade him out of being so ridiculous.  I was base enough to say that it wouldn’t please the Queen of Spain!  And he responded, he ’chose her to know that he did love Napoleon’!

Isa, I send these two last poems that Dall’ Ongaro may be aware of my sympathy’s comprehending more sides than one of Italian experience.

We have taken no apartment yet!!!

* * * * *

To Miss Browning

Florence:  June 7, 1861 [postmark].

I can’t let Robert’s disagreeable letter go alone, dearest Sarianna, though my word will be as heavy as a stone at the bottom of it.  I am deeply sorry you should have had the vain hope of seeing Robert and Pen.  As for me, I know my place; I am only good for a drag chain.  But, dear, don’t fancy it has been the fault of my will.  In fact, I said almost too much at Rome to Robert, till he fancied I had set my selfwill on tossing myself up as a halfpenny, and coming down on the wrong side.  Now, in fact, it was not at all (nearly) for Arabel that I wished to go, only I did really wish and do my best to go.  He, on the other hand, before we left Rome, had made up his mind (helped by a stray physician of mine, whom he met in the street) that it would be a great risk to carry me north.  He (Robert) always a little exaggerates the difficulties of travelling, and there’s no denying that I have less strength than is usual to me even at the present time.  I touched the line of vexing him, with my resistance to the decision, but he is so convinced that repose is necessary for me, and that the lions in the path will be all asleep by this time next year, that I yielded.  Certainly he has a right to command me away from giving him unnecessary anxieties.  What does vex me is that the dearest nonno should