The journey from Paris to Italy, if less comfortable and expeditious than now, was certainly more romantic, and the Brownings, in company with Mrs. Jameson and her niece, fared forth to Orleans, and thence to Avignon, where they rested for two days, making a poetic pilgrimage to Vaucluse, where Petrarca had sought solitude. "There at the very source of the '_chiare, fresche e dolci acque_,'" records Mrs. MacPherson in her biography of Mrs. Jameson, "Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her across through the shallow, curling waters, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus Love and Poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalized by Petrarca's fancy."
From Marseilles they sailed to Livorno (Leghorn), the port only a few miles from Pisa. The voyage was a delight to Mrs. Browning. She was enchanted with the beautiful panorama of the Riviera as they sailed down the coast, where the terraces of mountains rise, with old castles and ruins often crowning their summits, and the white gleam of the hill-towns against a background of blue sky. All the Spezzia region was haunted by memories of Shelley; Lerici, where last he had lived, was plainly in view, and they gazed sadly at Viareggio, encircled by pine woods and mountains, where the body of the poet had been found. In Pisa they took rooms in the Collegio Fernandino, in the Piazza del Duomo, in that corner of Pisa wherein are grouped the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo, all in this consummate beauty of silence and seclusion,--a splendor of abandoned glory. All the stir of life (if, indeed, one may dream of life in Pisa) is far away on the other side of the city; to this corner is left the wraith-like haunted atmosphere, where only shadows flit over the grass, and the sunset reflections linger on the Tower. A statue of Cosimo di Medici was near; the Lanfranchi palace, where Byron had lived, was not far away, on the banks of the Arno. They quite preferred the Duomo and the Campo Santo to social festivities, and Professor Ferrucci offered them all the hospitalities of the University library. They had an apartment of four rooms, "matted and carpeted," coffee and rolls in the morning, dinner at the Trattoria, "thrushes and chianti with a marvelous cheapness, no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah, or the lilies of the field, took as little thought for their dining," writes Mrs. Browning, "and it exactly suits us. At nine we have our supper of roast chestnuts and grapes.... My head goes round sometimes. I was never happy before in my life.... And when I am so good as to let myself be carried up-stairs, and so angelical as to sit still on the sofa, and so considerate as not to put my foot into a puddle, why, my duty is considered done to a perfection worthy all adoration.... Mrs. Jameson and Geraldine are staying in the hotel, and we manage to see them every day; so good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss her when she goes.... Our present residence we have taken for six months, but we have dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the evening grapes and chestnuts."