They hastened away to Padua, drove to Arqua, "for Petrarch's sake," passed through Brescia in a flood of white moonlight, and having reached Milan climbed--the invalid of Wimpole Street and her husband--to the topmost point of the cathedral.
From the Italian lakes they crossed by the St Gothard to Switzerland, and omitting part of their original scheme of wandering, journeyed in twenty-four hours without stopping from Strasburg to Paris.
In Paris they loitered for three weeks.

Mrs.Browning during the short visit which followed her marriage had hardly seen the city.

Bright shop-windows, before which little Wiedemann would scream with pleasure, restaurants and dinners _a la carte_, full-foliaged trees and gardens in the heart of the town were a not unwelcome exchange for Italian church-interiors and altar-pieces.

Even "disreputable prints and fascinating hats and caps" were appreciated as proper to the genius of the place, and the writer of _Casa Guidi Windows_ had the happiness of seeing her hero, M.le President, "in a cocked hat, and with a train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the boulevards to an occasional yell from the Red." By a happy chance they lighted in Paris upon Tennyson, now Poet-laureate, whom Mrs.Browning had hitherto known only through his poems; he was in the friendliest mood, and urged that they should make use of his house and servants during their stay in England, an offer which was not refused, though there was no intention of actually taking advantage of the kindness.

As for England, the thought of it, with her father's heart and her father's door closed against her, was bitter as wormwood to Mrs.Browning.