"Zanoni", Book 1, Chapter IV, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Chapter IV:

E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
Sprona.
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. lxxxviii.

----

Per fede: By faith

pistole: the French name given to the Spanish doubloon. A doubloon was 6.766 grams of 22-karat gold. 22-karat gold today is worth roughly 56 USD per gram, (or, at the time of this recording, roughly 45 pounds sterling or 51 euros per gram), so that's nearly 380 USD per coin. 5,000 pistoles, therefore, would be worth, in terms of its gold value, nearly 1.9 million USD today. A mere trifle to Zanoni...

mal-occhio: The Evil Eye, Italian style

The picture used is "The Poet" by Giuseppe Bonito. It was painted in 1742, so a few decades too early for our purposes, but it was irritatingly difficult to find a picture for this chapter at all. I really wanted a picture of a group of Neapolitan nobles or dandies of the late 18th century (to represent Count Cetoxa and his sycophants), but a google search in English wasn't coming up with anything. I'm sure if I could search Italian google in the Italian language I'd get some suitable stuff (there are a TON of 18th century Italian painters, after all), but that's not an option for me. So instead we get this. Bleh. At least the painting is by an 18th century Neapolitan painter, so we should be vaguely in the ballpark.

Although it's not clear to me the characters shown are actually Italian - the poet looks like he could be Irish, the guy with the pince-nez probably British (Scottish?), but the guy with the red cloak looks like he might have the Roman nose, as does the guy with the cane, so maybe those two could be Italians. Although other than the nose, cane-guy doesn't look obviously Italian to me, probably British again. The guy in the background is not sufficiently detailed to conclude on, and the two women don't give us great perspectives for making any determinations although they do not appear to have Roman noses.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2664/2664-h/2664-h.htm#link2HCH0004