Status Updates From I promessi sposi

For here, as in many other instances, there were two opposing customs, and no decision had been rendered on which of the two should prevail. This created the opportunity for a war to break out every time an absent man ran into someone else of the same temperament.

…and the groom left at last, his heart in turmoil. He kept repeating to himself the same strange words. "In the end there is justice in this world." For a man overcome by grief truly does not know what he is saying.

At the time…, this already good-sized village was also fortified, which conferred upon it the…benefit of a permanent garrison of Spanish soldiers, who taught modesty to the girls and women of the town, gave an occasional tap on the back to a husband or father, and, at summer's end, never failed to spread out into the vineyards to thin the grapes and relieve the peasants of the trouble of harvesting them.