Certain that Rosolia's inheritance will be greatly reduced, Zeluco abandons her, travels to Spain, enlists as an officer in the military, and follows his regiment to Cuba.
Though he offers the widow tender affections until she agrees to marry him, he treats her with cold indifference once she signs over her money and property to him, and she dies of grief.
Signora Sporza, as well as Laura's newly arrived half-brother Captain Seidlits and his friend Baron Carlostein, suspects the true state of affairs.
Nerina manipulates Zeluco through pretended fits of jealously and eventually convinces him that his and Laura's newborn son is really the bastard child of Captain Seidlits.
When Baron Carlostein, Captain Seidlits, and Signora Sporza examine the picture, they realize that one of the soldiers strangling a child bears a strong resemblance to Zelcuo.
After arranging her affairs and giving monetary gifts to Zeluco's relations, Laura agrees to marry Baron Carlostein and moves to Berlin with her family.
The “sheer number of secondary characters and the range of subplots mean that Zeluco himself frequently disappears for large sections of the book and that interest in the central plot is diffused by an increasing focus on comic secondary characters.”[3] Zeluco: The novel's title character, a brutal, vain, selfish Sicilian nobleman interested only in gaining riches and fulfilling his own desires.
[4] Being uneducated: Zeluco disdains learning, Mr. Steele receives a mediocre education, the servants hold irrational prejudices in favor of their own countries, and Mr.
[5] Public opinion: People in Zeluco's and Countess Brunella's social circles are delighted when they suffer, but every person who knows Laura grieves at her distress.
Constant mental suffering of wrongdoers: The narrator frequently comments on Zeluco's persistent unhappiness despite his material wealth and comfortable situation.
Physiognomy: Laura and Madame de Seidlits discuss whether or not a person's character manifests itself in his or her appearance; the narrator remarks that Zeluco is handsome despite his evil nature.
Manipulation, power and control: Zeluco dissembles in order to achieve his sexual conquests; he becomes obsessed with forcing Laura to yield to his desires; he feels the need to both display her beauty and prevent other people from interacting with her.
Transfer is shocked that she does not choose the more affluent match he arranges for her; Laura adamantly refuses to marry Zeluco because she does not love him, but is eventually forced into doing so because of a need for money.
Instead, the novel focuses on the everyday causes of Zeluco’s evil (an impulsive, selfish nature and an overindulgent parent) and his downfall (the vain assumption that his lover truly cares for him).
Zeluco is the novel's most unenlightened figure, and his excessive passions and uncontrolled impulses lead to his downfall; moral characters such as Bertram privilege rational thought over emotion and are rewarded for doing so.
Her mother responds, “I hope, my dear, […] he is the only man who ever will attempt it.”[11] Other characters, such as Buchanan, Targe, and the various priests, are mocked for their small-mindedness and obstinacy, illustrating Moore's Enlightenment emphasis on reason and education.
[12][13] Tone: Though serious when discussing Zeluco's mental disturbance due to his wrongdoing, the narrator's “urbanely amused voice” acts as a “unifying force” for the novel.
[14] As both 18th century and contemporary critics note, this humorous tone renders Zeluco’s moral message and long interludes unrelated to the main plot palatable to readers.
[15] Epigraphs: Almost all of the novel’s 100 chapters begins with brief quotations from well-known authors such as Alexander Pope, Shakespeare, Ovid, Virgil, and François de La Rochefoucauld.
The titular villain is unsurprisingly pro-slavery, while an educated physician – possibly provided as a stand-in for Moore's own opinions on the subject – makes the arguments against slavery.
Religious Intolerance: Protestantism vs. Catholicism: In one of quite a few asides Moore makes for his minor characters, a debate takes place between the late Colonel Seidlits and his Protestant clergyman relation about whether or not it is proper to convert Colonel Seidlit's Catholic wife to Protestantism, which Moore – a Protestant himself – tends to portray as the superior religion.
They also tend to interfere where they should not, like in Laura's ill-advised marriage to Zeluco, the multiple failed conversions from both Protestantism to Catholicism and vice versa, and the dangerous ruse against the Portuguese family.
This eventually leads to an argument about Scottish nationalism, including whether Mary, Queen of Scots plotted to kill her husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and whether Scotland should have joined with England under the Acts of Union 1707.
The issues are presented as polarizing the Scottish nation, showing the divisions between the Whig and Tory parties in particular, and especially their opinions on kings and the rights of royalty.
The English are generally portrayed as “reserved”[23] and melancholy, whereas the Italian are “ingenious” and “civilized”[24] and the French are “frank”[25] and – according to the minor character Thomas Dawson – quite dissimilar to the Scottish, particularly in their armies and unequal treatment of women.
In June 1789, Scots Magazine asserted that Zeluco “is not a common novel,” praising Moore for creating a work of lasting merit and a positive moral message “which, until men change their natures, can never be too often inculcated, or too powerfully enforced.”[28] The European Magazine and London Review expressed a similar opinion in October 1789 and placed a particular emphasis on Moore's ability to express serious messages in a “lively style” and create a narrator who is a “laughing philosopher.”[29] The September 1789 issue of The English Review, however, was highly critical, deeming Zeluco a merely mediocre novel.
[30] Zeluco provided inspiration for the title character of Lord Byron’s poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and was transformed into a stage play in 1812.
[34] Patricia Meyer Spacks asserts that Zeluco’s wholly evil character is flat rather than compelling, and that Laura’s sensibility serves only to remove all traces of her agency.
She claims that the combination of Zeluco’s and Laura’s intrinsically opposite personalities leads only to a “narrative stalemate.”[35] Pam Perkins, however, argues against such negative criticism, maintaining that the central plot of the novel was not Moore's sole focus.
Examining Zeluco’s Enlightenment-driven narrative style and incisive social commentary, she contends, can offer new insights into life at the end of the 18th century.