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.