This is why so many acts of violence in Italy assumed fantastic forms.

Even the country folk showed an infernal art in the execution of their _vendette_.

To serve the flesh of children up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is mentioned, for example, as one mode of wreaking vengeance in country villages.

Thus the high culture and aesthetic temperament of the Italians gave an intellectual quality to their vices.

Crude lust and bloodshed were insipid to their palates: they required the pungent sauce of a melodramatic catastrophe.
[1] Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty in Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma by Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di Prato in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol.i., and Cagnola's account of the Spanish occupation of Milan, ib.