To-day the people of the town are assembled in the marketplace, where an odd sort of scaffolding is being erected, for the exhibition of fireworks, against the 15th of August, the anniversary of Napoleon's christening. It is not improbable that the festival may rekindle the flame, and these black houses may in a few days be transformed into little fortresses, from which shots of death will be scattered around. Here it was political feeling that stirred up the angry passions of the townspeople; in other districts strife has been kindled by a personal offence, or some accidental circumstance of the most trivial nature. The shooting of a goat has occasioned the death of sixteen men, and roused a whole canton to arms. A young man throws a piece of bread to his dog, another man's dog snatches it; and a feud arises between two parishes, with death and murder upon both sides. Causes of quarrel are never wanting at the communal elections, festivals, or dances; these are often extremely ridiculous. At Mariana, in the year 1832, a dead ass became the occasion of a bloody feud between two villages. A procession from one of the villages was proceeding, during Easter-week, to a chapel, on the road to which a dead ass was lying. Upon this, the sacristan began to curse the people who had thrown the ass upon the road, and had thus profaned the holy procession. Immediately there arose a quarrel between the people of Lucciana and those of Borgo—the parish to which the ass belonged; guns were unslung, and shots exchanged; the holy procession was suddenly transformed into a confused mass of combatants. The one parish threw the blame of the dead ass upon the other; the body was dragged from Borgo to Lucciana, and from Lucciana to Borgo; and these pilgrimages were on every occasion accompanied with fighting, shooting, and the furious shouts of battle. It resembled the combat of the Greeks and Trojans for the dead body of Patroclus. The people of Borgo dragged the dead ass to the chapel of Lucciana, and flung it down at the door of the church; the Luccianese carried it off to Borgo, and after storming the village, fixed it on the church-tower. At last the Podestà seized the _corpus delicti_, already in a state of rapid decomposition, and none the better for its frequent travels, and the dead ass found a quiet resting-place in the grave. The poet Viale has written a comic Epopee on this occurrence, in the style of the Stolen Bucket of Bologna.