Vendetta! | Page 4

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.
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-- this well-knit form
erect and proud of bearing. Yes!--I am alive, though declared to be
dead; alive in the fullness of manly force-- and even sorrow has left few
distinguishing marks upon me, save one. My hair, once ebony-black, is
white as a wreath of Alpine snow, though its clustering curls are thick
as ever.
"A constitutional inheritance?" asks one physician, observing my
frosted locks.
"A sudden shock?" suggests another.
"Exposure to intense heat?" hints a third.
I answer none of them. I did so once. I told my story to a man I met by
chance--one renowned for medical skill and kindliness. He heard me to
the end in evident incredulity and alarm, and hinted at the possibility of
madness. Since then I have never spoken.
But now I write. I am far from all persecution--I can set down the truth
fearlessly. I can dip the pen in my own blood if I choose, and none
shall gainsay me! For the green silence of a vast South American forest
encompasses me--the grand and stately silence of a virginal nature,
almost unbroken by the ruthless step of man's civilization--a haven of
perfect calm, delicately disturbed by the fluttering wings and soft
voices of birds, and the gentle or stormy murmur of the freeborn winds
of heaven. Within this charmed circle of rest I dwell--here I lift up my

overburdened heart like a brimming chalice, and empty it on the ground,
to the last drop of gall contained therein. The world shall know my
history.
Dead, and yet living! How can that be?--you ask. Ah, my friends! If
you seek to be rid of your dead relations for a certainty, you should
have their bodies cremated. Otherwise there is no knowing what may
happen! Cremation is the best way--the only way. It is clean, and SAFE.
Why should there be any prejudice against it? Surely it is better to give
the remains of what we loved (or pretended to love) to cleansing fire
and pure air than to lay them in a cold vault of stone, or down, down in
the wet and clinging earth. For loathly things are hidden deep in the
mold--things, foul and all unnameable--long worms--slimy creatures
with blind eyes and useless wings--abortions and deformities of the
insect tribe born of poisonous vapor--creatures the very sight of which
would drive you, oh, delicate woman, into a fit of hysteria, and would
provoke even you, oh, strong man, to a shudder of repulsion! But there
is a worse thing than these merely physical horrors which come of
so-called Christian burial--that is, the terrible UNCERTAINTY. What,
if after we have lowered the narrow strong box containing our dear
deceased relation into its vault or hollow in the ground--what, if after
we have worn a seemly garb of woe, and tortured our faces into the
fitting expression of gentle and patient melancholy--what, I say, if after
all the reasonable precautions taken to insure safety, they should
actually prove insufficient?