In conjunction with Horace Hall, the then well known and
popular partner in the bank of Signor Emanuele Fenzi (one of whose
sons married an English wife, and is still my very good and forty
years old friend), he obtained a new concession of the mines from
the Grand Duke on very favourable terms, and by the time I made his
acquaintance had become a wealthy man. I fancy the Halls, Horace and
his much esteemed brother Alfred (who survived him many years, and was
the father of a family, one of the most respected and popular of the
English colony during the whole of my Florence life), subsequently
considered themselves to have been shouldered out of the enterprise
by a certain unhandsome treatment on the part of the fortunate tutor.
What may have been the exact history of the matter I do not know. But
I do know that Sloane always remained on very intimate terms with the
Grand Duke, and was a power in the inmost circles of the ecclesiastic
world.
He used to give great dinners on Friday, the principal object of which
seemed to be to show how magnificent a feast could be given without
infringing by a hair's breadth the rule of the Church. And admirably
he succeeded in showing how entirely the spirit and intention of
the Church in prescribing a fast could be made of none effect by a
skilfully-managed observance of the letter of its law.
The only opportunity I ever had of conversing with Cardinal Wiseman
was in Casa Sloane.
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