24/24 Browning viewed affairs more critically, more sceptically. "Robert and I," writes his wife jestingly, "have had some domestic _emeutes_, because he hates some imperial names." He detested all Buonapartes, he would say, past, present, and to come,--an outbreak explained by Mrs Browning to her satisfaction, as being only his self-willed way of dismissing a subject with which he refused to occupy his thoughts, a mere escapade of feeling and known to him as such. When all the logic and good sense were on the woman's side, how could she be disturbed by such masculine infirmities? |