She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well--very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine--he will want what he never had--that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety--I _have_ had everything and shall not forget. God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa goes with me--dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day or two before the end--she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you,--Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, Robert Browning. The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men. His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At about the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot. * Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton. Sept. '61. '. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded with,--will you do--all you can--suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure--I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come--a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won't think any more of it--now--at least. . . .'