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.


I, who write this, am a dead man. Dead legally--dead by absolute
proofs--dead and buried! Ask for me in my native city and they will
tell you I was one of the victims of the cholera that ravaged Naples
in 1884, and that my mortal remains lie moldering in the funeral
vault of my ancestors. Yet--I live! I feel the warm blood coursing
through my veins--the blood of thirty summers--the prime of early
manhood invigorates me, and makes these eyes of mine keen and
bright--these muscles strong as iron--this hand powerful of grip--