Of Miss Browning, who still lives, I will not speak; but what she told me of the poet’s mother may, I think, be told without indiscretion.  She had the extraordinary power over animals of which we hear sometimes, but of which I have never known a case so perfect as hers.  She would lure the butterflies in the garden to her, and the domestic animals obeyed her as if they reasoned.  Robert had been given a pure-blooded bulldog of a rare breed, which tolerated no interference from any person except him or his mother, and which would allow no familiarity with her on the part of strangers; so that when a neighbor came in he was not permitted to shake hands with her, for the dog at once showed his teeth.  Not even her husband was allowed to take the slightest liberty with her in the dog’s presence, and when Robert was more familiar with her than the dog thought proper he showed his teeth to him.  They one day put him to a severe test, Robert putting his arm around his mother’s neck as they sat side by side at the table.  The dog went round behind them, and, putting his feet upon the chair, lifted Robert’s arm off her shoulder with his nose, giving an intimation that he would not permit any liberty of that kind even from him.  They had a favorite cat, to which the dog had the usual antipathy of dogs, and one day he chased her under a cupboard, and, unable to reach her, kept her there besieged and unable to escape, till Mrs. Browning intervened and gave the dog a lecture, in which she told him of their attachment for the cat, and charged him never to molest her more.  If the creature had understood speech he could not have obeyed better; for from that time he was never known to molest the cat, and she, taking her revenge for past tyranny, bore herself most insolently with him, and when she scratched him over the head he only whimpered and turned away, as if to avoid temptation.  An injury to one of his feet made an operation necessary, and the family surgeon was called in to perform it, but found him so savage that he could not touch the foot or approach him.  Mrs. Browning came and talked to him in her way, and the dog submitted at once, without a whimper, to the painful operation.  She had been long dead when I knew the family.

We had planned to go together—­the elder Browning, Robert and Mrs. Browning, Miss Browning, my wife, and myself—­to pass the summer at Fontainebleau, and we were awaiting the arrival of Robert and his wife from Florence when the news came of Mrs. Browning’s illness, followed not much later by that of her death.  The intrusion even of a friend was too much for this catastrophe, and we saw little more of the Brownings until years after, when other and many changes of fortune had come over us, and we met again in Italy.