ng. The strong individuality which marks
his poetry was expressed not only in his face and head, but in his whole
demeanour. He was about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but
slender at the waist, and his movements expressed a combination of
vigour and elasticity." Mrs Browning with her slight figure, pale face,
shaded by chestnut curls, and grave eyes of bluish gray, is also
described; and presently entered to the American visitor Pen, a
blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, who babbled his little sentences in
Italian.

When, towards the close of September, Browning and his wife left London
for Paris, Carlyle by his own request was their companion on the
journey. Mrs Browning feared that his irritable nerves would suffer from
the vivacities of little Pen, but it was not so; he accepted with good
humour the fact that the small boy had not yet learned, like his own
Teufelsdroeckh, the Eternal No: "Why, sir," exclaimed Carlyle, "you have
as many aspirations as Napoleon!"[47] At Dieppe, Browning, as Carlyle
records, "did everything, fought for us, and we--that is, the woman, the
child and I--had only to wait and be silent." At Paris in the midst of
"a crowding, jangling, vociferous tumult, the brave Browning fought for
us, leaving me to sit beside the woman." An apartment was found on the
sunny side of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, "pretty, cheerful, carpeted
rooms," far brighter and better than those of Devonshire Street, and
when, to Browning's amusement, his wife had moved every chair and table
into the new and absolutely right position, they could rest and be
thankful. Carlyle spent several evenings with them, and repaid the
assistance which he received in various difficulties from Browning's
command of the language, by picturesque conversations in his native
speech: "You come to understand perfectly," wrote Mrs Browning, "when
you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn
sensibility." A little later Browning's father and sister spent some
weeks in Paris. Here, at all events, were perfect relations between the
members of a family group; the daughter here was her father's comrade
with something even of a maternal instinct; and the grandfather
discovered to his great satisfaction that his own talent for drawing had
descended to his grandchild.

The time was one when the surface of life in Paris showed an unruffled
aspect; but under the surface were heavings of inward agitation. On the
morning