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.