Here, indeed, was to be reckoned with that quality of strong common sense, without which she had been no Tuscan girl.  She had it in a remarkable degree, as you may judge when I say that it reconciled her to her position of wife to a vast, disorderly, tyrannical man nearly old enough to be her grandfather.  It enabled her to weigh the dignity, ease and comfort of the Casa Lanfranchi against any romantic picture which a more youthful lover could paint before her eyes.  I am convinced—­the conviction was, it will be seen, forced upon me—­that not only was she a loyal, obedient and cheerful, but also a loving wife to this huge and blusterous person, of whom nevertheless she was a good deal afraid.  For if he fondled her more than was becoming, he stormed at her also in a way not tolerable.

When Dr. Lanfranchi met me on my arrival, I remember that he took my hand in his own and never let go of it until he had me in his house.  This made me feel like a schoolboy, and I never lost the feeling of extreme youth in his eyes.  I believe now that his terrific silence, his explosive rages, mock ceremoniousness, and startling alternations were all parts of his method towards his pupils, for my experiences of them were not peculiar.  I have seen him cow a whole class by a lift of his great square head, and most certainly, whatever scandalous acts may have disgraced the university in my time, they never occurred where Dr. Lanfranchi was engaged.  Burly, bulky, blotched as he was, dirty in his person, and in his dress careless to the point of scandal, he had the respect of every student of the Bo.  He was prodigiously learned and a great eater.  The amount of liquid he could absorb would pass belief:  it used to be said among us that he drank most comfortably, like a horse, out of a bucket.  His lectures were extraordinary, crammed with erudition, which proceeded from him by gasps, jerks, and throttled cries for mercy on his failing breath, and illustrated by personalities of the most shocking description—­he spared no deformity or defect of any one of us if it happened to engage his eye.  Sometimes a whole hour’s lecture would be consumed in a scandalous tale of Rome or Naples, sometimes indeed it would be a reminiscence of his own youthful days, which policy, if not propriety, should have counselled him to omit.  Yet, as I say, he never lost the respect of the class, but was feared, served, and punctually obeyed.

It was much the same at home—­that is, his methods and their efficacy were the same.  In private life he was an easy, rough, facetious companion, excessively free in his talk, excessively candid in the expression of his desires, and with a reserve of stinging repartee which must have been more blessed to give than to receive.  Terrible storms of rage possessed him at times, under which the house seemed to rock and roll, which sent his sweet wife cowering into a corner.  But, though she feared him, she respected and loved the man—­and I was to find that out to my cost before my first year was out.