She loved Flavio Corradini, the scion of a rival and hated house, whose alliance her father, Prince Boccanera, roughly rejected, and whom her elder brother, Ercole, swore to slay should he ever surprise him with her.

Nevertheless the young man came to visit her in a boat, and she joined him by the little staircase descending to the river.

But one evening Ercole, who was on the watch, sprang into the boat and planted his dagger full in Flavio's heart.

Later on the subsequent incidents were unravelled; it was understood that Cassia, wrathful and frantic with despair, unwilling to survive her love and bent on wreaking justice, had thrown herself upon her brother, had seized both murderer and victim with the same grasp whilst overturning the boat; for when the three bodies were recovered Cassia still retained her hold upon the two men, pressing their faces one against the other with her bare arms, which had remained as white as snow.
But those were vanished times.

Nowadays, if faith remained, blood violence seemed to be departing from the Boccaneras.