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In the Middle Ages, when powerful dukes and barons frequently permitted themselves great crimes, when the power of ordinary tribunals was too weak to humble them, secret brotherhoods were formed, whose members, unknown to one another, bound themselves by oath to punish the guilty, not pardoning even their own friends or relatives. As soon as the secret judges had pronounced the decree of death, the condemned man was made aware of it, by a voice calling under his windows, or somewhere in his presence, the word—Weh! (woe!) This word, three times repeated, was a warning that he who heard