walking's sake, as well as for
the delight of what his expeditions showed him; and the facilities which
they supplied for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind
one of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy. He explored
Venice in all directions, and learned to know its many points of beauty
and interest, as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen from
a gondola; and when he had visited its every corner, he fell back on
a favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again;
never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day.
Later still, when a friend's gondola was always at hand, and air and
sunshine were the one thing needful, he would be carried to the Lido,
and take a long stretch on its farther shore.

The letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, from which I have already quoted,
concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place at
Saint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which Mr. Browning's
intuitions had played a striking part.

'And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence?
Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one mule
of the village being requisitioned by the 'Juge d'Instruction' from
Grenoble, come to enquire into a murder committed two days before.
My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up a
mountain-road of the most lovely description, and stop at the
summit whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre
d'Entremont,--even more secluded than our own: then we got back to our
own aforesaid. And in this Paradisial place, they found, yesterday week,
a murdered man--frightfully mutilated--who had been caught apparently in
the act of stealing potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurred
in the memory of the oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is the
mystery--whether the field's owner--in his irritation at discovering
the robber,--or one of a band of similar 'charbonniers' (for they
suppose the man to be a Piedmontese of that occupation) remains to
be proved: they began by imprisoning the owner, who denies his guilt
energetically. Now the odd thing is, that, either the day of, or after
the murder,--as I and S. were looking at the utter solitude, I had the
fancy "What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in this
field? Go and proclaim it--and subject myself to all the vexations
inflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins