HOW MY FATHER OUT OF NOTHING BUILT AN ARMY, AND IN FIVE MINUTES
PLANNED AN INVASION.
Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of
Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery, and
the like: All this is but a Sheep in a Lion's Skin, except the
Breed and disposition be stout and warlike. Nay, Number it
selfe in Armies importeth not much where the People is of weake
courage: For (as _Virgil_ saith) It never troubles a Wolfe, how
many the sheepe be."--BACON.
For the rest of the day my father shut himself in his room, while my
uncle spent the most of it seated on the brewhouse steps in a shaded
corner of the back court, through which the monks brought in their
furniture and returned to the ship for more. The bundles they
carried were prodigious, and all the morning they worked without halt
or rest, ascending and descending the hill in single file and always
at equal distances one behind another. Watching from the terrace
down the slope of the park as they came and went, you might have
taken them for a company of ants moving camp. But my uncle never
wholly recovered from the shock of their first freight, to see man by
man cross the court with a stout coffin on his back and above each
coffin a pack of straw: nor was he content with Fra Basilio's
explanation that the brethren slept in these coffins by rule and
saved the expense of beds.
"For my part," said my uncle, "considering the numbers that manage
it, I should have thought death no such dexterity as to need
practice."
"Yet bethink you, sir, of St. Paul's words. 'I protest,' said he,
'I die daily.'"
"Why, yes, sir, and so do we all," agreed my uncle, and fell silent,
though on the very point, as it seemed, of continuing the argument.
"I did not choose to be discourteous, lad," he explained to me later:
"but I had a mind to tell him that we do daily a score of things we
don't brag about--of which I might have added that washing is one:
and I believe 'twould have been news to him."
I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper. Poor man!
I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he
was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him
the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.
"But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?" I asked.
"A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world--you heard
your father say it. This evening he may choose to tell us some
further particulars."
"Why this evening?" I asked, and then suddenly remembered that to-day
was the 15th of July and St. Swithun's feast; that my father would
not fail to drink wine after dinner in the little temple below the
deer-park; and that he had promised to admit me to-night to make the
fourth in St. Swithun's brotherhood.
He appeared at dinner-time, punctual and dressed with more than his
usual care (I noted that he wore his finest lace ruffles); and before
going in to dinner we were joined by the Vicar, much perturbed--as
his manner showed--by the news of a sudden descent of papists upon
his parish. Indeed the good man so bubbled with it that we had
scarcely taken our seats before the stream of questions overflowed.
"Who were these men?" "How many!" "Whence had they come, and why?"
etc.
I glanced at my father in some anxiety for his temper. But he
laughed and carved the salmon composedly. He had a deep and tolerant
affection for Mr. Grylls.
"Where shall I begin!" said he. "They are, I believe, between twenty
and thirty in number, though I took no care to count; and they belong
to the Trappistine Order, to which I have ever been attracted; first,
because I count it admirable to renounce all for a faith, however
frantic, and secondly for the memory of Bouthillier de Rance, who a
hundred years ago revived the order after five hundred years of
desuetude."
"And who was he?" inquired the Vicar.
"He was a young rake in Paris, tonsured for the sake of the family
benefices, who had for mistress no less a lady than the Duchess de
Rohan-Montbazon. One day, returning from the country after a week's
absence and letting himself into the house by a private key, he
rushed upstairs in a lover's haste, burst open the door, and found
himself in a chamber hung with black and lit with many candles.
His mistress had died, the day before, of a putrid fever.
But--worse than this and most horrible--the servants had ordered the
coffin in haste; and, when delivered, it was found to be too short.
Upon which, to have done with her, in their terror of infection, they
had lopped off the head, which lay pitiably dissevered from the
trunk. For three years after the young man travelled as one mad, but
at length found solace in his neglected abbacy of Soligny-la-Trappe,
and in reviving its extreme Cistercian rigours."
"I had supposed the Trappists to be a French order in origin, and
confined to France," said the Vicar.
"They have offshoots: of which I knew but one in Italy, that settled
some fifty years back in a monastery they call Buon-Solazzo, outside
Florence, at the invitation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. But I have
been making question of our guests through Dom Basilio, their
guest-master and abbot _de facto_ (since their late abbot, an old man
whom he calls Dom Polifilo, died of exposure on the mountains some
three days before they embarked); and it appears that they belong to
a second colony, which has made its home for these ten years at
Casalabriva in Corsica, having arrived by invitation of the Queen
Emilia of that island, and there abiding until the Genoese burned the
roof over their heads."
The Vicar sipped his wine.
"You have considered," he asked, "the peril of introducing so many
papists into our quiet parish?"
"I have not considered it for a moment," answered my father,
cheerfully. "Nor have I introduced them. But if you fear they'll
convert--pervert--subvert--invert your parishioners and turn 'em into
papists, I can reassure you. For in the first place thirty men, or
thirty thousand, of whom only one can open his mouth, are, for
proselytizing, equal to one man and no more."
"They can teach by their example if not by their precept," urged the
Vicar.
"Their example is to sleep in their coffins. My good sir, if you
will not trust your English doctrine to its own truth, you might at
least rely on the persuasiveness of its comforts. Nay, pardon me, my
friend," he went on, as the Vicar's either cheekbone showed a red
flush, "I did not mean to speak offensively; but, Englishman though I
am, in matters of religion my countrymen are ever a puzzle to me.
At a great price you won your freedom from the Bishop of Rome and his
dictation. I admire the price and I love liberty; yet liberty has
its drawbacks, as you have for a long while been discovering; of
which the first is that every man with a maggot in his head can claim
a like liberty with yourselves, quoting your own words in support of
it. Let me remind you of that passage in which Rabelais--borrowing,
I believe, from Lucian--brings the good Pantagruel and his
fellow-voyagers to a port which he calls the Port of Lanterns.
'There (says he) upon a tall tower Pantagruel recognized the Lantern
of La Rochelle, which gave us an excellent clear light. Also we saw
the Lanterns of Pharos, of Nauplia, and of the Acropolis of Athens,
sacred to Pallas,' and so on; whence I draw the moral that
coast-lights are good, yet, multiplied, they complicate navigation."
"And apply your moral by erecting yet another!"
"Fairly retorted. Yet how can you object without turning the sword
of Liberty against herself? Have you never heard tell, by the way,
of Captain Byng's midshipman?"
"Who was he?"
"I forget his name, but he started his first night aboard ship by
kneeling down and saying his prayers, as his mother had taught him."
"I commend the boy," said my uncle.
"I also commend him: but the crowd of his fellow-midshipmen found it
against the custom of the service and gave him the strap for it.
This, however, raised him up a champion in one of the taller lads,
who protested that their conduct was tyrannous: 'and,' said he, very
generously, 'to-morrow night I too propose to say my prayers.
If any one object, he may fight me." Thus, being a handy lad with
his fists, he established the right of religious liberty on board.
By-and-by one or two of the better disposed midshipmen followed his
example: by degrees the custom spread along the lower deck, where the
dispute had happened in full view of the whole ship's company, seamen
and marines; and by the time she reached her port of Halifax she
hadn't a man on board (outside the ward-room) but said his prayers
regularly."
"A notable Christian triumph," was the Vicar's comment.
"Quite so. At Halifax," pursued my father, "Captain Byng took aboard
out of hospital another small midshipman, who on his first night no
sooner climbed into his hammock than the entire mess bundled him out
of it. 'We would have you to know, young man,' said they, 'that
private devotion is the rule on board our ship. It's down on your
knees this minute or you get the strap.'
"I leave you," my father concluded, "to draw the moral. For my part
the tale teaches me that in any struggle for freedom the real danger
begins with the moment of victory."
Said my uncle Gervase after a pause, "Then these Corsicans of yours,
brother, stand as yet in no real danger, since the Genoese are yet
harrying their island with fire and sword."
"In no danger at all as regards their liberty," answered my father,
poising his knife for a first cut into the saddle of mutton, "though
in some danger, I fear me, as regards their queen. They have,
however, taken the first and most important step by getting the news
carried to me. The next is to raise an army; and the next after
that, to suit the plan of invasion to our forces. Indeed," wound up
my father with another flourish of his carving-knife, "I am in
considerable doubt where to make a start."
"I hold," said my uncle, eyeing the saddle of mutton, "that you save
the gravy by beginning close alongside the chine."
"I was thinking for my part that either Porto or Sagone would serve
us best," said my father, meditatively.
Dinner over, the four of us strolled out abreast into the cool
evening and down through the deer-park to the small Ionic temple,
where Billy Priske had laid out fruit, wine, and glasses; and there,
with no more ceremony than standing to drink my health, the three
initiated me into the brotherhood of St. Swithun. It gave me a
sudden sense of being grown a man, and this sense my father very
promptly proceeded to strengthen.
"I had hoped," said he, putting down his glass and seating himself,
"to delay Prosper's novitiate. I had designed, indeed, that after
staying his full time at Oxford he should make the Grand Tour with me
and prepare himself for his destiny by a leisured study of cities and
men. But this morning's news has forced me to reshape my plans.
Listen--
"In the early autumn of 1735, being then at the Court of Tuscany, I
received sudden and secret orders to repair to Corte, the capital of
Corsica, an island of which I knew nothing beyond what I had learnt
in casual talk from the Count Domenico Rivarola, who then acted as
its plenipotentiary at Florence. He was a man with whom I would
willingly have taken counsel, but my orders from England expressly
forbade it. Rivarola in fact was suspected--and justly as my story
will show--of designs of his own for the future of the island; and
although, as it will also show, we had done better to consult him,
Walpole's injunctions were precise that I should by every means keep
him in the dark.
"The situation--to put it as briefly as I can--was this. For two
hundred years or so the island had been ruled by the Republic of
Genoa; and, by common consent, atrociously. For generations the
islanders had lived in chronic revolt, under chiefs against whom the
Genoese--or, to speak more correctly, the Bank of Genoa--had not
scrupled to apply every device, down to secret assassination.
_Uno avolso non deficit alter_: the Corsicans never lacked a leader
to replace the fallen: and in 1735 the succession was shared by two
noble patriots, Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.
"Under their attacks the Genoese were slowly but none the less
certainly losing their hold on the island. Their plight was such
that, although no one knew precisely what they would do, every one
foresaw that, failing some heroic remedy, they must be driven into
the sea, garrison after garrison, and lose Corsica altogether; and of
all speculations the most probable seemed that they would sell the
island, with all its troubles, to France. Now, for France to acquire
so capital a _point d'appui_ in the Mediterranean would obviously be
no small inconvenience to England: and therefore our Ministers--who
had hitherto regarded the struggles of the islanders with
indifference--woke up to a sudden interest in Corsican affairs.
"They had no pretext for interfering openly. But if the Corsicans
would but take heart and choose themselves a king, that king could at
a ripe moment be diplomatically acknowledged; and any interference by
France would at once become an act of violent usurpation. (For let
me tell you, my friends--the sufferings of a people count as nothing
in diplomacy against the least trivial act against a crown.)
The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no
notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted
followers have tolerated it. Yet--as sometimes happens--there was a
third man, of greater descent than they, to whom at a pinch the crown
might be offered, and with a far more likely chance of the Corsicans'
acquiescence. This was a Count Ugo Colonna, a middle-aged man,
descended from the oldest nobility of the island, and head of his
family, which might more properly be called a clan; a patriot, in his
way, too, though lacking the fire of the Paolis, to whom he had
surrendered the leadership while remaining something of a
figure-head. In short my business was to confer with him at Corte,
persuade the Corsican chiefs to offer him the crown, and persuade him
to accept it.
"I arrived then at the capital and found Count Ugo willing enough,
though by no means eager, for the honour. He was, in fact, a
mild-mannered gentleman of no great force of character, and
frequently interrupted our conference to talk of a bowel-complaint
which obviously meant more to him than all the internal complications
of Europe: and next to his bowel-complaint--but some way after--he
prized his popularity, which ever seemed more important than his
country's welfare: or belike he confused the two. He was at great
pains to impress me with the sacrifices he had made for Corsica--
which in the past had been real enough: but he had come to regard
them chiefly as matter for public speaking, or excuse for public
bowing and lifting of the hat. You know the sort of man, I dare say.
To pass that view of life, at his age, is the last test of greatness.
"Still, the notion of being crowned King of Corsica tickled his
vanity, and would have tickled it more had he begotten a son to
succeed him. It opened new prospects of driving through crowds and
bowing and lifting his hat: and he turned pardonably sulky when the
two Paolis treated my proposals with suspicion. They had an immense
respect for England as the leader of the free peoples: but they
wanted to know why in Tuscany I had not taken their Count Rivarola
into my confidence. In fact they were in communication with their
plenipotentiary already, and half way towards another plan, of which
very excusably they allowed me to guess nothing.
"The upshot was that my interference threw Count Ugo into a pet with
them. He only wanted them to press him; was angry at not being
pressed; yet believed that they would repent in time. Meanwhile he
persuaded me to ride back with him to one of his estates, a palace
above the valley of the Taravo.
"I know not why, but ever the vow of Jephthah comes to my mind as I
remember how we rode up the valley to Count Ugo's house in the hour
before sunset. 'And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with
timbrels and with dances, and she was his only child.' He had made
no vow and was incapable, poor man, of keeping any so heroic; and she
came out with no timbrel or dance, but soberly enough in her
sad-coloured dress of the people. Yet she came out while we rode a
good mile off, and waited for us as we climbed the last slope, and
she was his only child.
"How shall I tell you of her? She helped my purpose nothing, for at
first she was vehemently opposed to her father's consenting to be
king. Her politics she derived in part from the reading of
Plutarch's Lives and in part from her own simplicity. They were
childish, utterly: yet they put me to shame, for they glowed with the
purest love of her country. She has walked on fiery ploughshares
since then; she has trodden the furnace, and her beautiful bare feet
are seared since they trod the cool vintage with me on the slopes
above the Taravo. . . . Priske, open the first of those bottles,
yonder, with the purple seal! Here is that very wine, my friends.
Pour and hold it up to the sunset before you taste. Had ever wine
such a royal heart? I will tell you how to grow it. Choose first of
all a vineyard facing south, between mountains and the sea. Let it
lie so that it drinks the sun the day through; but let the protecting
mountains carry perpetual snow to cool the land breeze all the night.
Having chosen your site, drench it for two hundred years with the
blood of freemen; drench it so deep that no tap-root can reach down
below its fertilizing virtue. Plant it in defeat, and harvest it in
hope, grape by grape, fearfully, as though the bloom on each were a
state's ransom. Next treat it after the recipe of the wine of Cos;
dropping the grapes singly into vats of sea water, drawn in stone
jars from full fifteen fathoms in a spell of halcyon weather and left
to stand for the space of one moon. Drop them in, one by one, until
the water scarcely cover the mass. Let stand again for two days, and
then call for your maidens to tread them, with hymns, under the new
moon. Ah, and yet you may miss! For your maidens must be clean, and
yet fierce as though they trod out the hearts of men, as indeed they
do. A king's daughter should lead them, and they must trample with
innocence, and yet with such fury as the prophet's who said 'their
blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my
raiment: for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my
redeemed is come.' . . ."
My father lifted his glass. "To thee, Emilia, child and queen!"
He drank, and, setting down his glass, rested silent for a while, his
eyes full of a solemn rapture.
"My friends," he went on at length, with lowered voice, "know you
that old song?
"'Methought I walked still to and fro,
And from her company could not go--
But when I waked it was not so:
In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.'
"All that autumn I spent under her father's roof, and--my leave
having been extended--all the winter following. The old Count had
convinced himself by this time that by accepting the crown he would
confer a signal service on Corsica, and had opened a lengthy
correspondence with the two Paolis, whose hesitation to accept this
view at once puzzled and annoyed him. For me, I wished the
correspondence might be prolonged for ever, for meanwhile I lived my
days in company with Emilia, and we loved.
"I was a fool. Yet I cannot tax myself that I played false to duty,
though by helping to crown her father I was destroying my own hopes,
since as heiress to his throne Emilia must be far removed from me.
We scarcely thought of this, but lived in our love, we two.
So the winter passed and the spring came and the _macchia_ burst into
flower.
"Prosper, you have never set eyes on the _macchia_, the glory of your
kingdom. But you shall behold it soon, lad, and smell it--for its
fragrance spreads around the island and far out to sea. It belts
Corsica with verdure and a million million flowers--cistus and myrtle
and broom and juniper; clematis and vetch and wild roses run mad.
Deeper than the tall forests behind it the _macchia_ will hide two
lovers, and under the open sky hedge off all the world but their
passion . . . In the _macchia_ we roamed together, day after day, and
forgot the world; forgot all but honour; for she, my lady, was a
child of sixteen, and as her knight I worshipped her. Ah, those
days! those scented days!
"But while we loved and Count Ugo wrote letters, the two Paolis were
doing; and by-and-by they played the strangest stroke in all
Corsica's history. That spring, at Aleria on the east coast, there
landed a man of whom the Corsican's had never heard. He came out of
nowhere with a single ship and less than a score of attendants--to be
precise, two officers, a priest, a secretary, a major-domo, an
under-steward, a cook, three Tunisian slaves, and six lackeys.
He had sailed from Algiers, with a brief rest in the port of Leghorn,
and he stepped ashore in Turkish dress, with scarlet-lined cloak,
turban, and scimetar. He called himself Theodore, a baron of
Westphalia, and he brought with him a ship-load of arms and
ammunition, a thousand zechins of Tunis, and letters from half a
dozen of the Great Powers promising assistance. Whether these were
genuine or not, I cannot tell you.
"Led by the two Paolis--this is no fairy tale, my friends--the
Corsicans welcomed and proclaimed him king, without even waiting for
despatches from Count Rivarola (who had negotiated) to inform them of
the terms agreed upon. They led him in triumph to Corte, and there,
in their ancient capital, crowned and anointed him. He gave laws,
issued edicts, struck money, distributed rewards. He put himself in
person at the head of the militia, and blocked up the Genoese in
their fortified towns. For a few months he swept the island like a
conqueror.
"All this, as you may suppose, utterly disconcerted the Count Ugo
Colonna, who saw his dreams topple at one stroke into the dust.
But the chiefs found a way to reconcile him. Their new King Theodore
must marry and found a dynasty. Let a bride be found for him in
Colonna's daughter, and let children be born to him of the best blood
in Corsica.
"The Count recovered his good temper: his spirits rose at a bound: he
embraced the offer. His grandsons should be kings of Corsica.
And she--my Emilia--
"We met once only after her father had broken the news to her.
He had not asked her consent; he had told her, in a flutter of pride,
that this thing must be, and for her country's sake. She came to me,
in the short dusk, upon the terrace overlooking the Taravo.
She was of heart too heroic to linger out our agony. In the dusk she
stretched out both hands--ah, God, the child she looked! so helpless,
so brave!--and I caught them and kissed them. Then she was gone.
"A week later they married her to King Theodore in the Cathedral of
Corte, and crowned her beside him. Before the winter he left the
island and sailed to Holland to raise moneys! for the promises of the
Great Powers had come to nothing, even if they were genuinely given.
For myself, I had bidden good-bye to Corsica and sailed for Tuscany
on the same day that Emilia was married.
"Now I must tell you that on the eve of sailing I wrote a letter to
the queen--as queen she would be by the time it reached her--wishing
her all happiness, and adding that if, in the time to come, fate
should bring her into poverty or danger, my estate and my life would
ever be at her service. To this I received, as I had expected, no
answer: nor did she, if ever she received it, impart its contents to
her husband. He--the rascal--had a genius for borrowing, and yet
'twas I that had to begin by seeking him out to feed him with money.
"News came to me that he was in straits in Holland, and had for a
year been drumming the banks in vain: also that the Genoese, whom his
incursion had merely confounded, were beginning to lift their heads
and take the offensive again. At first he had terrified them like a
mad dog; the one expedient they could hit on was to set a price upon
his head. Certainly he had gifts. He contrived--and by sheer
audacity, mark you, backed by a fine presence--to drive them into
such a panic that, months after he had sailed, they were petitioning
France to send over troops to help them. The Corsicans sent a
counter-embassy. 'If,' said they to King Louis, 'your Majesty force
us to yield to Genoa, then let us drink this bitter cup to the health
of the Most Christian King, and die.' King Louis admired the speech
but nibbled at the opportunity. Our own Government meanwhile had
either lost heart or suffered itself to be persuaded by the Genoese
Minister in London. In the July after my Emilia's marriage, our late
Queen Caroline, as regent for the time of Great Britain, issued a
proclamation forbidding any subject of King George to furnish arms or
provisions to the Corsican malcontents.
"And now you know, my dear Prosper, why I cast away the career on
which I had started with some ambition. My lady lacked help, which
as a British subject I was prohibited from offering. My conscience
allowed me to disobey: but not to disobey and eat His Majesty's
bread. I flung up my post, and as a private man hunted across Europe
for King Theodore."
I ran him to earth in Amsterdam. He was in handsome lodgings, but
penniless. It was the first time I had conversed with him; and he, I
believe, had never seen my face. I found him affable, specious,
sanguine, but hollow as a drum. For _her_ sake I took up and renewed
the campaign among the Jew bankers.
"To be short, he sailed back for Corsica in a well-found ship, with
cannon and ammunition on board, and some specie--the whole cargo
worth between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. He made a landing
at Tavagna and threw in almost all his warlike stores. His wife
hurried to meet him: but after a week, finding that the French were
pouring troops into the island, and becoming (they tell me) suddenly
nervous of the price on his head, he sailed away almost without
warning. They say also that on the passage he murdered the man whom
his creditors had forced him to take as supercargo, sold the vessel
at Leghorn, and made off with the specie--no penny of which had
reached his queen or his poor subjects. She--sad childless soul--
driven with her chiefs and counsellors into the mountains before the
combined French and Genoese, escaped a year later to Tuscany, and hid
herself with her sorrows in a religious house ten miles from
Florence.
"So ended this brief reign: and you, Prosper, have met the chief
actor in it. A very few words will tell the rest. The French
overran the island until '41, when the business of the Austrian
succession forced them to withdraw their troops and leave the Genoese
once more face to face with the islanders. Promptly these rose
again. Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli had fled to Naples; Hyacinth with
two sons, Pascal and Clement, whom he trained there (as I am told) in
all the liberal arts and in undying hatred of the Genoese.
These two lads, returning to the island, took up their father's fight
and have maintained it, with fair success as I learn. From parts of
the island they must have completely extruded the enemy for a while;
since my lady made bold, four years ago, to settle these visitors of
ours in her palace above the Taravo. It would appear, however, that
the Genoese have gathered head again, and his business with them may
explain why Pascal Paoli has not answered the letter I addressed to
him, these eight months since, notifying my son's claim upon the
succession. Or he may have reckoned it indecent of me to address him
in lieu of his Queen, who had returned to the island. I had not
heard of her return. I heard of it to-day for the first time, and of
her peril, which shall hurry us ten times faster than our
pretensions. Prosper," my father concluded, "we must invade Corsica,
and at once."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed my uncle. "How!"
"In a ship," my father answered him as simply. "How otherwise?"
Said my uncle, "But where is your ship?"
Answered my father, "If you will but step outside and pick up one of
these fir-cones in the grass, you can almost toss it on to her deck.
She is called the _Gauntlet_, and her skipper is Captain Jo Pomery.
I might have racked my brain for a month to find such a skipper or a
ship so well found and happily named as this which Providence has
brought to my door. I attach particular importance to the name of a
ship."
My uncle ran his hands through his hair. "But to invade a kingdom,"
he protested, "you will need also an army!"
"Certainly. I must find one."
"But where?"
"It must be somewhere in the neighbourhood, and within twenty-four
hours," replied my father imperturbably. "Time presses."
"But an army must be paid. You have not only to raise one, but to
find the money to support it."
"You put me in mind of an old German tale," said my father, helping
himself to wine. "Once upon a time there were three brothers--but
since, my dear Gervase, you show signs of impatience, I will confine
myself to the last and luckiest one. On his travels, which I will
not pause to describe in detail, he acquired three gifts--a knapsack
which, when opened, discharged a regiment of grenadiers; a cloth
which, when spread, was covered with a meal; and a purse which, when
shaken, filled itself with money."
"Will you be serious, brother?" cried my uncle.
"I am entirely serious!" answered my father. "The problem of an army
and its pay I propose to solve by enlisting volunteers; and the
difficulty of feeding my troops (I had forgotten it and thank you for
reminding me) will be minimized by enlisting as few as possible.
Myself and Prosper make two; Priske, here, three; I would fain have
you accompany us, Gervase, but the estate cannot spare you.
Let me see--" He drummed for a moment on the table with his fingers.
"We ought to have four more at least, to make a show: and seven is a
lucky number."
"You seriously design," my uncle demanded, "to invade the island of
Corsica with an army of seven persons?"
"Most seriously I do. For consider. To begin with, this Theodore--
a vain hollow man--brought but sixteen, including many
non-combatants, and yet succeeded in winning a crown. You will allow
that to win a crown is a harder feat than to succeed to one.
On what reckoning then, or by what Rule-of-Three sum, should Prosper,
who goes to claim what already belongs to him, need more than seven?
"Further," my father continued, "it may well be argued that the fewer
he takes the better; since we sail not against the Corsicans but
against their foes, and therefore should count on finding in every
Corsican a soldier for our standard.
"Thirdly, the Corsicans are a touchy race, whom it would be impolitic
to offend with a show of foreign strength.
"Fourthly, we must look a little beyond the immediate enterprise, and
not (if we can help it) saddle Prosper's kingdom with a standing
army. For, as Bacon advises, that state stands in danger whose
warriors remain in a body and are used to donatives; whereof we see
examples in the turk's Janissaries and the Pretorian Bands of Rome.
"And fifthly, we have neither the time nor the money to collect a
stronger force. The occasion presses: and _fronte capillata est,
post haec Occasio calva_. Time turns a bald head to us if we miss
our moment to catch him by the forelock."
"The Abantes," put in Mr. Grylls, "practised the direct contrary: of
whom Homer tells us that they shaved the forepart of their heads, the
reason being that their enemies might not grip them by the hair in
close fighting. I regret, my dear Sir John, you never warned me that
you designed Prosper for a military career. We might have bestowed
more attention on the warlike customs and operations of the
ancients."
My father sipped his wine and regarded the Vicar benevolently.
For closest friends he had two of the most irrelevant thinkers on
earth and he delighted to distinguish between their irrelevancies.
"But I would not," he continued, "have you doubt that the prime cause
of our expedition is to deliver my lady from the Genoese; or believe
that Prosper will press his claims unless she acknowledge them."
"I am wondering," said my uncle, "where you will find your other four
men."
"Prosper and I will provide them to-morrow," my father answered, with
a careless glance at me. "And now, my friends, we have talked
over-long of Corsica and nothing as yet of that companionship which
brings us here--it may be for the last time. Priske, you may open
another four bottles and leave us. Gervase, take down the book from
the cupboard and let the Vicar read to us while the light allows."
"The marker tells me," said the Vicar, taking the book and opening
it, "that we left in the midst of Chapter 8--_On the Luce or Pike_.
"Ay, and so I remember," my uncle agreed.
The Vicar began to read--
"'And for your dead bait for a pike, for that you may be taught
by one day's going a-fishing with me or any other body that
fishes for him; for the baiting of your hook with a dead
gudgeon or a roach and moving it up and down the water is too
easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it.
And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it
by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this:
Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your
dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and
when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards
the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than
likely that you have a pike follow with more than common
eagerness. And some affirm that any bait anointed with the
marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron is a great temptation to
any fish.
"'These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of
mine, that pretended to do me a courtesy. But if this
direction to catch a pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain
this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely
good--'"
"Upon my soul, brother," interrupted my uncle Gervase, removing the
pipe from his mouth, "this reads like a direction for the taking of
Corsica."