They visited Spezzia and glanced at the house of Shelley at Lerici; passed through olive woods and vineyards, and rested in "a sort of eagle's nest" at the highest habitable point of the Baths of Lucca.

Here the baby's great cheeks grew rosier; Browning gained in spirits; and his wife was able "to climb the hills and help him to lose himself in the forests." When they wandered at noon except for some bare-footed peasant or some monk with the rope around his waist, it was complete solitude; and on moonlit nights they sat by the waterfalls in an atmosphere that had the lightness of mountain air without its keenness.

On one occasion they climbed by dry torrent courses five miles into the mountains, baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback--"such a congregation of mountains; looking alive in the stormy light we saw them by." It was certainly a blessed transformation of the prostrate invalid in the upper room at Wimpole Street.

Setting aside his own happiness, Browning could feel with regard to her and his deep desire to serve her, that he had seen of the travail of his soul, and in this matter was satisfied.
The weeks at Siena of the year 1850 were not quite so prosperous.
During that summer Mrs Browning had been seriously ill.

When sufficiently recovered she was carried by her husband to a villa in the midst of vines and olives, a mile and a half or two miles outside Siena, which commanded a noble prospect of hills and plain.