She was an admirably charming companion before the footlights of the
world's stage--not so uniformly charming behind its scenes, for
her unreasonableness always and her occasional violence were very
difficult to deal with. But she was, as Dickens's poor Jo says in
_Bleak House_, "werry good to me!"
CHAPTER VI.
After some little time and trouble we found an apartment in the
Palazzo Berti, in the ominously named Via dei Malcontenti. It was so
called because it was at one time the road to the Florentine Tyburn.
Our house was the one next to the east end of the church of Santa
Croce. Our rooms looked on to a large garden, and were pleasant
enough. We witnessed from our windows the building of the new steeple
of Santa Croce, which was completed before we left the house.
It was built in great measure by an Englishman, a Mr. Sloane, a
fervent Catholic, who was at that time one of the best-known figures
in the English colony at Florence.
He was a large contributor to the recently completed facade of the
Duomo in Florence, and to many other benevolent and pietistic good
works. He had been tutor in the Russian Boutourlin family, and when
acting in that capacity had been taken, by reason of his geological
acquirements, to see some copper mines in the Volterra district, which
the Grand Duke had conceded to a company under whose administration
they were going utterly to the bad. Sloane came, saw, and eventually
conquered.
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