Miss Browning, whose devotion during many years first to her mother, then to her widowed father, had been entire, now became her brother's constant companion.

They rested for the summer at Le Croisic, a little town in Brittany, in a delightfully spacious old house, with the sea to right and left, through whose great rushing waves Browning loved to battle, and, inland, a wild country, picturesque with its flap-hatted, white-clad, baggy-breeched villagers.

Their enjoyment was unspoilt even by some weeks of disagreeable weather, and to the same place, which Browning has described in his _Two Poets of Croisic_-- Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts Spitefully north, they returned in the following summer.

During this second visit (September 1867) that most spirited ballad of French heroism, _Herve Riel_, was written, though its publication belongs to four years later.[94] In June 1868 came grief of a kind that seemed to cut him off from outward communication with a portion of what was most precious in his past life.

Arabel Barrett, his wife's only surviving sister, who had supported him in his greatest sorrow, died in Browning's arms.