eBooks Base 2000

Browning has called one of her poems "Casa Guidi
Windows."
The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace, we found a
spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the
latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests
in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church
where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the anteroom to
greet us, as did his little boy, Robert, whom they call Pennini for
fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was
bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so
very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called
Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile,
and spirit-like,--not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he
had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very
pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his mother's. He is
nine years old, and seems at once less childlike and less manly than
would befit that age.


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