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Updated: June 13, 2025
Such was my life during the seven months which I spent at Florence. After this dinner I never saw Zen, or Medini, or Zanovitch, except by chance in the public places. Here I must recount some incidents which took place towards the middle of December. Lord Lincoln, a young man of eighteen, fell in love with a Venetian dancer named Lamberti, who was a universal favourite.
I was sitting down to dinner when Medini came in cursing Zen and Zanovitch, whom he accused of being the authors of his misfortune, and of refusing to give him a hundred sequins, without which he could not possibly go. "We are all going to Pisa," said he, "and cannot imagine why you do not come, too." "Very good," I said, laughingly, "but please to leave me now as I have to do my packing."
Printing is cheaper at Bologna than anywhere else, and though the Inquisition is established there the press is almost entirely free. All the exiles from Florence reached Bologna four or five days after myself. Madame Lamberti only passed through on her way to Venice. Zanovitch and Zen stayed five or six days; but they were no longer in partnership, having quarreled over the sharing of the booty.
Premislas Zanovitch was then at the happy age of twenty-five; he was the son of a gentleman of Budua, a town on the borders of Albania and Dalmatia, formerly subject to the Venetian Republic and now to the Grand Turk. In classic times it was known as Epirus.
This person was Premislas Zanovitch, who afterwards became as famous as his brother who cheated the Amsterdam merchants, and adopted the style of Prince Scanderbeck. I shall speak of him later on. Both these finished cheats came to a bad end.
He took good apartments, hired a carriage, rented a box at the opera, had a skilled cook, and gave his mistress a lady-in-waiting. He then shewed himself at the best club, richly dressed, and covered with jewellery. He introduced himself under the name of Count Premislas Zanovitch. There is a club in Florence devoted to the use of the nobility.
As I had expected, I found Medini and his mistress there, with two foreign ladies and their attendant cavaliers, and a fine-looking and well-dressed Venetian, between thirty-five and forty, whom I would not have recognized if Zanovitch had not told me his name, Alois Zen. "Zen was a patrician name, and I felt obliged to ask what titles I ought to give him.
Zanovitch marked him down, and in a short time had become an intimate friend of the fair Lamberti. He then made up to Lord Lincoln, and took him to the lady's house, as a polite man takes a friend to see his mistress. Madame Lamberti, who was in collusion with the rascal, was not niggardly of her favours with the young Englishman.
I was sitting down to dinner when Medini came in cursing Zen and Zanovitch, whom he accused of being the authors of his misfortune, and of refusing to give him a hundred sequins, without which he could not possibly go. "We are all going to Pisa," said he, "and cannot imagine why you do not come, too." "Very good," I said, laughingly, "but please to leave me now as I have to do my packing."
Sasso Sassi, the banker, had already paid Zanovitch six thousand sequins by my lord's orders. Medini came to see me, furious at not having been asked to join the party, while I congratulated myself on my absence. My surprise may be imagined, when, a few days after, a person came up to my room, and ordered me to leave Florence in three days and Tuscany in a week.
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