Dumas, another admiration, they did not see; an introduction to Hugo, Browning carried about for years but had no chance of presenting; Beranger they saw in the street, and regretted the absence of an intermediator.

Balzac, to their grief, was just dead.

A complete set of his works was one of their Florentine ambitions.

One memorable intimacy was formed, however, during the Paris winter of 1851-52; for it was now that he first met Joseph Milsand, his warm friend until Milsand's death in 1886, and probably, for the last twenty years at least, the most beloved of all his friends, as he was at all times one of his shrewdest yet kindliest critics.

Their summer visits to London (1851, 1852, 1855, 1856) brought them much more of intimate personal converse, tempered, however, inevitably, in a yet greater proportion, by pain, discomfort, and fatigue.