A man of so active a mind by planting himself before a subject could always find something to say; but it might happen that such sheer brain-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which give its highest value to poetry.[87] In the late summer and early autumn of 1862 Browning, in company with his son, was among the Pyrenees at "green pleasant little Cambo, and then at Biarritz crammed," he says, "with gay people of whom I know nothing but their outsides." The sea and sands were more to his liking than the gay people.[88] He had with him one book and no other--a Euripides, in which he read vigorously, and that the readings were fruitful his later poetry of the Greek drama bears witness.

At present however his creative work lay in another direction; the whole of "the Roman murder story"-- the story of Pompilia and Guido and Caponsacchi--he describes as being pretty well in his head.

It needed a long process of evolution before the murder story could uncoil its sinuous lengths in a series of volumes.

The visit to Ste-Marie "a wild little place in Brittany" near Pornic, in the summer of 1863--a visit to be repeated in the two summers immediately succeeding--is directly connected with two of the poems of _Dramatis Personae_.

The story of _Gold Hair_ and the landscape details of _James Lee's Wife_ are alike derived from Pornic.
The solitude of the little Breton hamlet soothed Browning's spirit.