ten and were denied at St Malo; the reports of the French
Admiralty were examined and indicated the substantial accuracy of the
poem. On one point Browning erred; it was not a day's holiday to be
spent with his wife "la Belle Aurore" which the Breton sailor petitioned
for as the reward of his service, but a "conge absolu," the holiday of a
life-time. In acknowledging his error to Dr Furnivall, and adding an
explanation of its cause, he dismissed the subject with the word,
"Truth above all things; so treat the matter as you please."[107]

For the purposes of holiday-making the resources of the northern French
coast, with which Browning's ballad of the Croisickese pilot is
associated, were, says Mrs Orr, becoming exhausted. Yet some rest and
refreshment after the heavy tax upon his strength made by a London
season with its various claims were essential to his well-being. His
passion for music would not permit him during his residence in town to
be absent from a single important concert; the extraordinary range of
his acquaintance with the works of great and even of obscure composers
was attested by Halle. In his sonnet of 1884, inscribed in the Album to
Mr Arthur Chappell, _The Founder of the Feast_, a poem not included in
any edition of his works, he recalls these evenings of delight:

Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
When, night by night--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.

Long since in Florence he had become acquainted with Miss Egerton-Smith,
who loved music like himself, and was now often his companion at public
performances in London. She was wealthy, and with too little confidence
in her power to win the regard of others, she lived apart from the great
world. In 1872 Browning lost the warm-hearted and faithful friend who
had given him such prompt, womanly help in his worst days of grief--Miss
Blagden. Her place in his memory remained her own. Miss Egerton-Smith
might seem to others wanting in strength of feeling and cordiality of
manner. Browning knew the sensitiveness of her nature, which responded
to the touch of affection, and he could not fail to discover her true
self, veiled though it was by a superficial reserve. And as he knew her,
so he wrote of her in the opening of his _La Saisiaz_:

You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the w