Did you know Lady Elgin in Paris? She has been hopelessly, in the opinion of her physicians, affected by paralysis, but is now better, her daughter writes to me. A most remarkable person Lady Elgin is. We left her sitting in her garden, not able to speak—to articulate one word—but with one of the most radiant happy faces I ever saw in man or woman. I think I remember that you knew her. Her salon was one of the most agreeable in Paris, and she herself, with her mixture of learning and simplicity, one of the most interesting persons in it....
Dearest Madame Braun, I won't think of the possibility even of your writing to me, so little do I expect to hear. Indeed, I would not write if I considered it would entail writing upon you. Only believe that I tenderly regard and think of you, and always shall. May God bless you, my dear friend! Your attached
Elizabeth B. Browning.
The following letter was written at Paris during the stay there which intervened between leaving Havre and the return to Florence:
6 Rue de Castiglione, Place Vendôme, Paris:
October 2 [1858].
My dearest Isa,—I am saddened, saddened by your letter. We both are. Indeed, this last news from India must have struck—I know it did. Still, to your generous nature, long regret for your dear Louisa will be impossible; and you, so given to forget yourself, will come to forget a grief which is only your own. For she was in the world as not of it, in a painful sense; she was cut off from the cheerful, natural development of ordinary human beings; and if, as was probable, the conviction of this dreary fact had fastened on her mind, the result would have been perhaps demoralising, certainly depressing, more and more. Rather praise God for her therefore, dearest Isa, that she is gone above the cloud, gone where she can exercise active virtues and charities, instead of being the mild patient object of the charities and virtues of her friends. Perhaps she ministers to you now instead of being ministered to by you, while the remembrance of her life on earth is tenderly united to you ever, a proof before men and angels that your life (whatever you may please to say of yourself) has not been useless, nor barren of good and tender deeds....
In this letter and the last (such depressed letters!) you compare your own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures, and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you, and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold unthankfully and throw back as a poor gift. Your excellent understanding will work clear your spirits presently. Some of those whom you think enviable, if they showed you their secret griefs, unsuspected by you, would leave tears in your eyes for them, not you. Every heart knows its own bitterness, and God knows when the bitterest drop is necessary for the heart's health. May He bless you, love you, teach you, strengthen you, make you serene and bright in Him, dear, dear Isa. I have spoken as to a sister; I have spoken as to my own soul in an hour of faintness. Let us take courage, Isa.