The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vendetta, by Marie Corelli

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Title: Vendetta
A Story of One Forgotten

Author: Marie Corelli

Posting Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #4360]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 15, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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VENDETTA

A STORY OF ONE FORGOTTEN

By MARIE CORELLI

Author of "ARDATH," "THELMA," "A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS," "WORMWOOD,"
etc., etc.

PREFACE

Lest those who read the following pages should deem this story at all
improbable, it is perhaps necessary to say that its chief incidents are
founded on an actual occurrence which took place in Naples during the
last scathing visitation of the cholera in 1884. We know well enough,
by the chronicle of daily journalism, that the infidelity of wives is,
most unhappily, becoming common--far too common for the peace and good
repute of society. Not so common is an outraged husband's
vengeance--not often dare he take the law into his own hands--for in
England, at least, such boldness on his part would doubtless be deemed
a worse crime than that by which he personally is doomed to suffer. But
in Italy things are on a different footing--the verbosity and red-tape
of the law, and the hesitating verdict of special juries, are not there
considered sufficiently efficacious to sooths a man's damaged honor and
ruined name. And thus--whether right or wrong--it often happens that
strange and awful deeds are perpetrated--deeds of which the world in
general hears nothing, and which, when brought to light at last, are
received with surprise and incredulity. Yet the romances planned by the
brain of the novelist or dramatist are poor in comparison with the
romances of real life-life wrongly termed commonplace, but which, in
fact, teems with tragedies as great and dark and soul-torturing as any
devised by Sophocles or Shakespeare. Nothing is more strange than
truth--nothing, at times, more terrible!

MARIE CORELLI.

August, 1886.

VENDETTA!

CHAPTER I.