"If any secret should sacred be,
Though it guarded the life of a family,
And any woman be there about,
She will die but what she will find it out;
And though it hurried her soul to--well--
That secret she _must_ immediately tell."
--_Sage Stuffing for Young Ducks_.
There are in Italy, as elsewhere, families to whom a fatality or
tradition is attached. The following is a curious legend of the kind: