giving you too much trouble, dearest, kind
Isa?

Your affectionate friend
E.B.B.

* * * * *

After a few weeks only at Florence the Brownings moved on to Rome and
there (at No. 43 Via Bocca di Leone) they passed the winter. Both were
now actively engaged on their new volumes of poetry--Mr. Browning on his
'Men and Women,' Mrs. Browning on 'Aurora Leigh,' both of which were,
however, still far from completion.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: December 21, 1853.

My dearest Mona Nina,--I have been longer than I thought to be in Rome
without writing to you, especially when I have a letter of yours for
which to thank you. My fancy was to wait till I had seen Gerardine in
her own home, and then to write to you, but I have called on her three
times, and the three Fates have been at it each time to prevent my
getting in. Still, we have met _here_, and I would rather not wait any
longer for whatever might be added to what I have seen and know
already....

Ah, dearest friend! you have heard how our first step into Rome was a
fall, not into a catacomb but a fresh grave[29], and how everything here
has been slurred and blurred to us, and distorted from the grand antique
associations. I protest to you I doubt whether I shall get over it, and
whether I ever shall feel that this is Rome. The first day at the bed's
head of that convulsed and dying child; and the next two, three, four
weeks in great anxiety about his little sister, who was all but given up
by the physicians; the English nurse horribly ill of the same fever, and
another case in this house. It was not only sympathy. I was selfishly
and intensely frightened for my own treasures; I wished myself at the
end of the world with Robert and Penini twenty times a day. Rome has
been very peculiarly unhealthy; and I heard a Monsignore observe the
other morning that there would not be much truce to the fever till March
came. Still, I begin to take breath again and be reasonable. Penini's
cheeks are red as apples, and if we avoid the sun, and the wind, and the
damp, and, above all if God takes care of us, we shall do excellently.
_I_, of course, am in a flourishing condition; walk out nearly every day
and scarcely cough at all. Which isn't enough for me, you see. Dear
friend, we have not set foot in the Vatican. Oh, barbarians!

But we have seen Mrs. Kemble, and I am as enchanted as