[5] ‘Cacciatore’ is a huntsman or sportsman of any kind; but in Rome it designates especially a man of a roving and adventurous class whose occupation in life is to shoot game for the market according to the various seasons, as there are large tracts of country where game is not preserved. [↑]
[6] ‘Falcaccio,’ a horrid, great hawk. [↑]
[7] Cancellieri (Mercato, § xvi.) mentions the actual finding of such a treasure; or at least of ‘thousands of pieces of gold money, in a hole leading to a drain of the fountain in Piazza Madama, on May 30, 1652, by a boy who had accidentally dropped a toy into this hole.’ One such fact would afford substance to a multitude of such fictions: though they doubtless had their origin in the discovery of mineral wealth. [↑]
[8] See conversation at the end of the ‘Serpe bianca.’ Further details of a similar nature were given me in connection with a number of brigand stories which I have in MS. [↑]
[9] ‘Monti,’ Rione Monti, the most populous district in Rome. [↑]
[10] ‘Papetto,’ equal to two pauls; about three halfpence more than a (silver) lira or franc. In use in Rome until the monetary convention with France in 1868. [↑]
[11] ‘Cataletto,’ a kind of large roomy coffin, with a hollow wagonheaded lid, in which dead or wounded persons are carried. [↑]
[12] ‘Barretta’ or ‘bara,’ is the bier on which the ‘cataletto’ is carried; but it is most often made all in one, and either word is used for either, as also ‘feretro.’ ‘Aver la bocca sulla bara,’ is ‘to have one foot in the grave.’ [↑]
[13] ‘Paino,’ see n. 3, p. 264. [↑]
[14] It must be a very quaint condition of mind which can imagine that a fortune of something like three millions sterling can be quietly removed in secret in gold coin from a cellar to a bedroom in the small hours of the night. But then to persons like the narrator a few pieces of gold seem a fortune. [↑]