warm flesh and blood, compared with which the ideal seemed
second-rate. It belonged to one of Powers's daughters, who had come
for a sitting; she was serving as her father's model. Upon seeing the
unexpected boy, fixed there in speechless admiration, the young lady
uttered a scream and vanished. I now knew whom the face of the clay
effigy reminded me of, and afterwards when I saw beautiful statues I
thought of her, and shook my head.

My father and Powers took a strong fancy to each other, and met and
talked a great deal. As I just said now, spiritualism was a fad at that
time, and Powers was pregnant with marvels which he had either seen
or heard of, and which he was always ready to attempt to explain on
philosophical grounds. My father would listen to it all, and both
believe it and not believe it. He felt, I suppose, that Powers was
telling the truth, but he was not persuaded that all the truth was in
Powers's possession, or in any one else's. Powers also had a great deal
to say concerning the exoteric and esoteric truths of sculpture; his
racy individuality marked it all. He would not admit that there was any
limit to what might be done with marble; and when my father asked him
one day whether he could model a blush on a woman's cheek, he said,
stoutly, that the thing was possible. My father, as his manner was
with people, went with the sculptor as far as he chose to carry him,
accepting all his opinions and judgments, and becoming Powers, so far as
he might, for the time being, in order the better to get to the root of
his position. And then, afterwards, he would return to his own self, and
quietly examine Powers's assertions and theories in the dry light. My
father was two men, one sympathetic and intuitional, the other critical
and logical; together they formed a combination which could not be
thrown off its feet.

We had already met the Brownings in London; but at this period they
belonged in Italy more than anywhere else, and Florence formed the best
setting for the authors both of Aurora Leigh and of Sordello. They lived
in a villa called Casa Guidi, and with them was their son, a boy
younger than myself, whom they called Pennini, though his real name
was something much less fastidious. Penni, I believe, used to be an
assistant of Raphael early in the sixteenth century, and Pennini may
have been nicknamed after him. His mother, who was an extravagant woman
on the emotional and spiritual plane, made the poor l