Like our Caius here and like his hereditary antagonist, Ducconius Furfur, I have never taken sides in our age-long local feud.

Like all outsiders and like a majority of its partisans, I have grieved at its existence, deplored its unfortunate results and hoped for its extinction.

I think I may say with truth that there was not one inhabitant of this neighborhood who did not rejoice when the heads of the two families, with the abolition of the feud and the creation of the permanent amity in view, arranged a marriage between the lovely daughter of the head of the northern branch of the Vedian House and the son of the northern branch of the Satronian House.

Satronian or Vedian; freeman or slave, everyone was delighted at the prospect of lasting harmony.

The sudden death of Satronius Patavinus not only blasted these hopes, but intensified antagonisms; for all the Vedians felt that a daughter of the clan had been sacrificed in vain and all Satronians regretted that vast properties about Padua, long possessed by Satronians, passed by the will of her husband to a young widow, born of the Vedian House.