Let us look at an instance.
In the district of Acquapendente three boys were watching cattle, and
one of them said: 'Let us find out the way how people are hanged.'
While one was sitting on the shoulders of the other, and the third,
after fastening the rope round the neck of the first, was tying it to
an oak, a wolf came, and the two who were free ran away and left the
other hanging. Afterwards they found him dead, and buried him. On the
Sunday his father came to bring him bread, and one of the two confessed
what had happened, and showed him the grave. The old man then killed
him with a knife, cut him up, brought away the liver, and entertained
the boy's father with it at home. After dinner, he told him whose liver
it was. Hereupon began a series of reciprocal murders between the two
families, and within a month thirty-six persons were killed, women as
well as men.
And such 'vendette,' handed down from father to son, and extending to
friends and distant relations, were not limited to the lower classes,
but reached to the highest. The chronicles and novels of the period are
full of such instances, especially of vengeance taken for the violation
of women. The classic land for these feuds was Romagna, where the
'vendetta' was interwoven with intrigues and party divisions of every
conceivable sort.
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