When Captain Moretti returned to Vescovato with this reply, and

unable to hold out any prospect of the recovery of the vessels, Murat

shed tears. "Is it possible," he cried, "that I am so unfortunate! I

purchase ships in order to leave Corsica, and the Government seizes

them; I burn with impatience to quit the island, and find every

path blocked up. Be it so! I will send away those brave men who so

generously guard me--I will stay here alone--I will bare my breast

to Galloni, or I will find means to release myself from the bitter

and cruel fate that persecutes me"--and here he looked at the pistols

lying on the table. Franceschetti had entered the room; with emotion he

said to Murat that the Corsicans would never suffer him to be harmed.

"And I," replied Joachim, "cannot suffer Corsica to be endangered or

embarrassed on my account; I must be gone!"

The four days had elapsed, and Galloni showed himself with his troops

before Vescovato. But the people stood ready to give him battle; they

opened fire. Galloni withdrew; for Murat had just left the village.

It was on the 17th of September that he left Vescovato, accompanied by

Franceschetti, and some officers and veterans, and escorted by more

than five hundred armed Corsicans. He had resolved to go to Ajaccio

and embark there. Wherever he showed himself--in the Casinca, in

Tavagna, in Moriani, in Campoloro, and beyond the mountains, the people

crowded round him and received him with _evvivas_. The inhabitants

of each commune accompanied him to the boundaries of the next. In San

Pietro di Venaco, the priest Muracciole met him with a numerous body

of followers, and presented to him a beautiful Corsican horse. In a

moment Murat had leapt upon its back, and was galloping along the road,

proud and fiery, as when, in former days of more splendid fortune, he

galloped through the streets of Milan, of Vienna, of Berlin, of Paris,

of Naples, and over so many battle-fields.

In Vivario he was entertained by the old parish priest Pentalacci, who

had already, during a period of forty years, extended his hospitality

to so many fugitives--had received, in these eventful times,

Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Corsicans, and had once even sheltered

the young Napoleon, when his life was threatened by the Paolists. As

they sat at breakfast, Joachim asked the old man what he thought of

his design on Naples. "I am a poor parish priest," said Pentalacci,

"and understand neither war nor diplomacy; but I am inclined to doubt

whether your Majesty is likely to win a crown _now_, which you could

not keep formerly when you were at the head of an army." Murat replied

with animation: "I am as certain of again winning my kingdom, as I am

of holding this handkerchief in my hand."

Joachim sent Franceschetti on before, to ascertain how people were

likely to receive him in Ajaccio,--for the relatives of Napoleon, in

that town, had taken no notice of him since his arrival in the island;

and he had, therefore, already made up his mind to stay in Bocognano

till all was ready for the embarkation. Franceschetti, however, wrote

to him, that the citizens of Ajaccio would be overjoyed to see him

within their walls, and that they pressingly invited him to come.

On the 23d of September, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Murat

entered Ajaccio for the second time in his life; he had entered it

the first time covered with glory--an acknowledged hero in the eyes of

all the world--for it was when he landed with Napoleon, as the latter

returned from Egypt. At his entry now the bells were rung, the people

saluted him with _vivats_, bonfires burned in the streets, and the

houses were illuminated. But the authorities of the city instantly

quitted it, and Napoleon's relations--the Ramolino family--also

withdrew; the Signora Paravisini alone had courage and affection enough

to remain, to embrace her relative, and to offer him hospitality in her

own house. Murat thought fit to live in a public locanda.

The garrison of the citadel of Ajaccio was Corsican, and therefore

friendly to Joachim. The commandant shut it up within the fortress,

and declared the town in a state of siege. Murat now made the

necessary preparations for his departure; previously to which he drew

up a proclamation addressed to the Neapolitan people, consisting of

thirty-six articles; it was printed in Ajaccio.

On the 28th of September, an English officer named Maceroni,[M] made

his appearance, and requested an audience of Joachim. He had brought

passes for him from Metternich, signed by the latter, by Charles

Stuart, and by Schwarzenberg. They were made out in the name of Count

Lipona, under which name--an anagram of Napoli--security to his person

and an asylum in German Austria or Bohemia were guaranteed him. Murat

entertained Maceroni at table; the conversation turned upon Napoleon's

last campaign, and the battle of Waterloo, of which Maceroni gave

a circumstantial account, praising the cool bravery of the English

infantry, whose squares the French cavalry had been unable to break.

Murat said: "Had I been there, I am certain I should have broken them;"

to which Maceroni replied: "Your Majesty would have broken the squares

of the Prussians and Austrians, but never those of the English." Full

of fire Murat cried--"And I should have broken those of the English

too: for Europe knows that I never yet found a square, of whatever

description, that I did not break!"

Murat accepted Metternich's passes, and at first pretended to agree

to the proposal; then he said that he must go to Naples to conquer his

kingdom. Maceroni begged of him with tears to desist while it was yet

time. But the king dismissed him.

On the same day, towards midnight, the unhappy Murat embarked, and, as

his little squadron left the harbour of Ajaccio, several cannon-shots

were fired at it from the citadel, by order of the commandant; it

was said the cannons had only been loaded with powder. The expedition

consisted of five small vessels besides a fast-sailing felucca called

the Scorridora, under the command of Barbarà, and in these there were

in all two hundred men, inclusive of subaltern officers, twenty-two

officers, and a few sailors.

The voyage was full of disasters. Fortune--that once more favoured

Napoleon when, seven months previously, he sailed from Elba with his

six ships and eight hundred men to regain his crown--had no smiles for

Murat. It is touching to see how the poor ex-king, his heart tossed

with anxieties and doubts, hovers hesitatingly on the Calabrian coast;

how he is forsaken by his ships, and repelled as if by the warning

hand of fate from the unfriendly shore; how he is even at one time on

the point of making sail for Trieste, and saving himself in Austria,

and yet how at last the chivalrous dreamer, his mental vision haunted

unceasingly by the deceptive semblance of a crown, adopts the fantastic

and fatal resolution of landing in Pizzo.

"Murat," said the man who told me so much of Murat's days in Ajaccio,

and who had been an eye-witness of what passed then, "was a brilliant

cavalier with very little brains." It is true enough. He was the

hero of a historical romance, and you cannot read the story of his

life without being profoundly stirred. He sat his horse better than

a throne. He had never learnt to govern; he had only, what born kings

frequently have not, a kingly bearing, and the courage to be a king;

and he was most a king when he had ceased to be acknowledged as such:

this _ci-devant_ waiter in his father's tavern, Abbé, and cashiered

subaltern, fronted his executioners more regally than Louis XVI., of

the house of Capet, and died not less proudly than Charles of England,

of the house of Stuart.

A servant showed me the rooms in Franceschetti's in which Murat had

lived. The walls were hung with pictures of the battles in which he had

signalized himself, such as Marengo, Eylau, the military engagement

at Aboukir, and Borodino. His portrait caught my eye instantly. The

impassioned and dreamy eye, the brown curling hair falling down over

the forehead, the soft romantic features, the fantastic white dress,

the red scarf, were plainly Joachim's. Under the portrait I read these

words--"1815. _Tradito!!! abbandonato!!! li 13 Octobre assassinato!!!_"

(betrayed, forsaken; on the 13th of October, murdered);--groanings of

Franceschetti's, who had accompanied him to Pizzo. The portrait of

the General hangs beside that of Murat, a high warlike form, with a

physiognomy of iron firmness, contrasting forcibly with the troubadour

face of Joachim. Franceschetti sacrificed his all for Murat--he left

wife and child to follow him; and although he disapproved of the

undertaking of his former king, kept by his side to the last. An

incident which was related to me, and which I also saw mentioned in the

General's _Mémoires_, indicates great nobility of character, and does

honour to his memory. When the rude soldiery of Pizzo were pressing

in upon Murat, threatening him with the most brutal maltreatment,

Franceschetti sprang forward and cried, "I--I am Murat!" The stroke

of a sabre stretched him on the earth, just as Murat rushed to

intercept it by declaring who he was. All the officers and soldiers

who were taken prisoners with Murat at Pizzo were thrown into prison,

wounded or not, as it might happen. After Joachim's execution, they

and Franceschetti were taken to the citadel of Capri, where they

remained for a considerable time, in constant expectation of death,

till at length the king sent the unhoped-for order for their release.

Franceschetti returned to Corsica; but he had scarcely landed, when he

was seized by the French as guilty of high treason, and carried away

to the citadel of Marseilles. The unfortunate man remained a prisoner

in Provence for several years, but was at length set at liberty, and

allowed to return to his family in Vescovato. His fortune had been

ruined by Murat; and this general, who had risked his life for his

king, saw himself compelled to send his wife to Vienna to obtain from

the wife of Joachim a partial re-imbursement of his outlay, and, as the

journey proved fruitless, to enter into a protracted law-process with

Caroline Murat, in which he was nonsuited at every stage. Franceschetti

died in 1836. His two sons, retired officers, are among the most

highly respected men in Corsica, and have earned the gratitude of their

countrymen by the improvements they have introduced in agriculture.

His wife, Catharina Ceccaldi, now far advanced in years, still

lives in the same house in which she once entertained Murat as her

guest. I found the noble old lady in one of the upper rooms, engaged

in a very homely employment, and surrounded with pigeons, which

fluttered out of the window as I entered; a scene which made me feel

instantly that the healthy and simple nature of the Corsicans has

been preserved not only in the cottages of the peasantry, but also

among the upper classes. I thought of her brilliant youth, which she

had spent in the beautiful Naples, and at the court of Joachim; and

in the course of the conversation she herself referred to the time

when General Franceschetti, and Coletta, who has also published a

special memoir on the last days of Murat, were in the service of the

Neapolitan soldier-king. It is pleasant to see a strong nature that

has victoriously weathered the many storms of an eventful life, and has

remained true to itself when fortune became false; and I contemplated

this venerable matron with reverence, as, talking of the great things

of the past, she carefully split the beans for the mid-day meal of

her children and grandchildren. She spoke of the time, too, when

Murat lived in the house. "Franceschetti," she said, "made the most

forcible representations to him, and told him unreservedly that he was

undertaking an impossibility. Then Murat would say sorrowfully, 'You,

too, want to leave me! Ah! my Corsicans are going to leave me in the

lurch!' We could not resist him."

Leaving Vescovato, and wandering farther into the Casinca, I still

could not cease thinking on Murat. And I could not help connecting

him with the romantic Baron Theodore von Neuhoff, who, seventy-nine

years earlier, landed on this same coast, strangely and fantastically

costumed, as it had also been Murat's custom to appear. Theodore von

Neuhoff was the forerunner in Corsica of those men who conquered

for themselves the fairest crowns in the world. Napoleon obtained

the imperial crown, Joseph the crown of Spain, Louis the crown of

Holland, Jerome the crown of Westphalia--the land of which Theodore

King of Corsica was a native,--the adventurer Murat secured the Norman

crown of the Two Sicilies, and Bernadotte the crown of the chivalrous

Scandinavians, the oldest knights of Europe. A hundred years _before_

Theodore, Cervantes had satirized, in his Sancho Panza, the romancing

practice of conferring island kingdoms in reward for conquering

prowess, and now, a hundred years _after_ him, the romance of _Arthur

and the Round Table_ repeats itself here on the boundaries of Spain,

in the island of Corsica, and continues to be realized in the broad

daylight of the nineteenth century, and our own present time.

I often thought of Don Quixote and the Spanish romances in Corsica. It

seems to me as if the old knight of La Mancha were once more riding

through the world's history; in fact, are not antique Spanish names

again becoming historical, which were previously for the world at large

involved in as much romantic obscurity as the Athenian Duke Theseus of

the _Midsummer Night's Dream_?

CHAPTER V.

VENZOLASCA--CASABIANCA--THE OLD CLOISTER.

"Que todo se passa en flores

Mis amores,

Que todo se passa en flores."--_Spanish Song._

Near Vescovato lies the little hamlet of Venzolasca. It is a walk as if

through paradise, over the hills to it through the chestnut-groves. On

my way I passed the forsaken Capuchin convent of Vescovato. Lying on

a beautifully-wooded height, built of brown granite, and roofed with

black slate, it looked as grave and austere as Corsican history itself,

and had a singularly quaint and picturesque effect amid the green of

the trees.

In travelling through this little "Land of Chestnuts," one forgets

all fatigues. The luxuriance of the vegetation, and the smiling hills,

the view of the plain of the Golo, and the sea, make the heart glad;

the vicinity of numerous villages gives variety and human interest,

furnishing many a group that would delight the eye of the _genre_

painter. I saw a great many walled fountains, at which women and girls

were filling their round pitchers; some of them had their spindles with

them, and reminded me of what Peter of Corsica has said.

Outside Venzolasca stands a beautifully situated tomb belonging to

the Casabianca family. This is another of the noble and influential

families which Vescovato can boast. The immediate ancestors of the

present French senator Casabianca made their name famous by their deeds

of arms. Raffaello Casabianca, commandant of Corsica in 1793, Senator,

Count, and Peer of France, died in Bastia at an advanced age in 1826.

Luzio Casabianca, Corsican deputy to the Convention, was captain of

the admiral's ship, _L'Orient_, in the battle of Aboukir. After Admiral

Brueys had been torn in pieces by a shot, Casabianca took the command

of the vessel, which was on fire, the flames spreading rapidly. As far

as was possible, he took measures for saving the crew, and refused to

leave the ship. His young son Giocante, a boy of thirteen, could not be

prevailed on to leave his father's side. The vessel was every moment

expected to blow up. Clasped in each other's arms, father and son

perished in the explosion. You can wander nowhere in Corsica without

breathing an atmosphere of heroism.

Venzolasca has a handsome church, at least interiorly. I found people

engaged in painting the choir, and they complained to me that the

person who had been engaged to gild the wood-carving, had shamefully

cheated the village, as he had been provided with ducat-gold for the

purpose, and had run off with it. The only luxury the Corsicans allow

themselves is in the matter of church-decoration, and there is hardly

a paese in the island, however poor, which does not take a pride in

decking its little church with gay colours and golden ornaments.

From the plateau on which the church of Venzolasca stands, there is

a magnificent view seawards, and, in the opposite direction, you have

the indescribably beautiful basin of the Castagniccia. Few regions of

Corsica have given me so much pleasure as the hills which enclose this

basin in their connexion with the sea. The Castagniccia is an imposing

amphitheatre, mountains clothed in the richest green, and of the finest

forms, composing the sides. The chestnut-woods cover them almost to

their summit; at their foot olive-groves, with their silver gray,

contrast picturesquely with the deep green of the chestnut foliage.

Half-appearing through the trees are seen scattered hamlets, Sorbo,

Penta, Castellare, and far up among the clouds Oreto, dark, with tall

black church-towers.

The sun was westering as I ascended these hills, and the hours of

that afternoon were memorably beautiful. Again I passed a forsaken

cloister--this time, of the Franciscans. It lay quite buried among

vines, and foliage of every kind, dense, yet not dense enough to

conceal the abounding fruit. As I passed into the court, and was

entering the church of the convent, my eye lighted on a melancholy

picture of decay, which Nature, with her luxuriance of vegetation,

seemed laughingly to veil. The graves were standing open, as if those

once buried there had rent the overlying stones, that they might fly to

heaven; skulls lay among the long green grass and trailing plants, and

the cross--the symbol of all sorrow--had sunk amid a sea of flowers.

CHAPTER VI.

HOSPITALITY AND FAMILY LIFE IN ORETO--THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

"To Jove belong the stranger and the hungry,

And though the gift be small, it cheers the

heart."--_Odyssey._

An up-hill walk of two hours between fruit-gardens, the walls of which

the beautiful wreaths of the clematis garlanded all the way along, and

then through groves of chestnuts, brought me to Oreto.

The name is derived from the Greek oros, which means _mountain_;

the place lies high and picturesque, on the summit of a green hill.

A huge block of granite rears its gray head from the very centre of

the village, a pedestal for the colossal statue of a Hercules. Before

reaching the paese, I had to climb a laborious and narrow path, which

at many parts formed the channel of a brook.

At length gaining the summit, I found myself in the piazza, or public

square of the village, the largest I have seen in any paese. It is the

plateau of the mountain, overhung by other mountains, and encircled

by houses, which look like peace itself. The village priest was

walking about with his beadle, and the _paesani_ stood leaning in the

Sabbath-stillness on their garden walls. I stepped up to a group and

asked if there was a locanda in the place; "No," said one, "we have no

locanda, but I offer you my house--you shall have what we can give." I

gladly accepted the offer, and followed my host. Marcantonio, before

I entered his house, wished that I should take a look of the village

fountain, the pride of Oreto, and taste the water, the best in the

whole land of Casinca. Despite my weariness, I followed the Corsican.

The fountain was delicious, and the little structure could even make

pretensions to architectural elegance. The ice-cold water streamed

copiously through five pipes from a stone temple.

Arrived in Marcantonio's house, I was welcomed by his wife without

ceremony. She bade me a good evening, and immediately went into the

kitchen to prepare the meal. My entertainer had conducted me into

his best room, and I was astonished to find there a little store

of books; they were of a religious character, and the legacy of a

relative. "I am unfortunate," said Marcantonio, "for I have learnt

nothing, and I am very poor; hence I must stay here upon the mountain,

instead of going to the Continent, and filling some post." I looked

more narrowly at this man in the brown blouse and Phrygian cap. The

face was reserved, furrowed with passion, and of an iron austerity,

and what he said was brief, decided, and in a bitter tone. All the

time I was in his company, I never once saw this man smile; and found

here, among the solitary hills, an ambitious soul tormented with its

thwarted aspirations. Such minds are not uncommon in Corsica; the

frequent success of men who have emigrated from these poor villages is

a powerful temptation to others; often in the dingiest cabin you see

the family likenesses of senators, generals, and prefects. Corsica is

the land of upstarts and of natural equality.

Marcantonio's daughter, a pretty young girl, blooming, tall, and

well-made, entered the room. Without taking any other notice of the

presence of a guest, she asked aloud, and with complete _naïveté_:

"Father, who is the stranger, is he a Frenchman; what does he want in

Oreto?" I told her I was a German, which she did not understand. Giulia

went to help her mother with the meal.

This now made its appearance--the most sumptuous a poor man could

give--a soup of vegetables, and in honour of the guest a piece of meat,

bread, and peaches. The daughter set the viands on the table, but,

according to the Corsican custom, neither she nor the mother took a

share in the meal; the man alone helped me, and ate beside me.

He took me afterwards into the little church of Oreto, and to the edge

of the rock, to show me the incomparably beautiful view. The young

curato, and no small retinue of _paesani_, accompanied us. It was a

sunny, golden, delightfully cool evening. I stood wonderstruck at such

undreamt-of magnificence in scenery as the landscape presented--for at

my feet I saw the hills, with all their burden of chestnut woods, sink

towards the plain; the plain, like a boundless garden, stretch onwards

to the strand; the streams of the Golo and Fiumalto wind through it to

the glittering sea; and far on the horizon, the islands of Capraja,

Elba, and Monte Chiato. The eye takes in the whole coast-line to

Bastia, and southwards to San Nicolao; turning inland, mountain upon

mountain, crowned with villages.

A little group had gathered round us as we stood here; and I now began

to panegyrize the island, rendered, as I said, so remarkable by its

scenery and by the history of its heroic people. The young curate

spoke in the same strain with great fire, the peasants gesticulated

their assent, and each had something to say in praise of his country.

I observed that these people were much at home in the history of

their island. The curate excited my admiration; he had intellect, and

talked shrewdly. Speaking of Paoli, he said: "His time was a time of

action; the men of Orezza spoke little, but they did much. Had our

era produced a single individual of Paoli's large and self-sacrificing

spirit, it would be otherwise in the world than it is. But ours is an

age of chimeras and Icarus-wings, and yet man was not made to fly."

I gladly accepted the curate's invitation to go home with him; his

house was poor-looking, built of black stone. But his little study was

neat and cheerful; and there might be between two and three hundred

volumes on the book-shelves. I spent a pleasant hour in conversation

with this cultivated, liberal, and enlightened man, over a bottle of

exquisite wine, Marcantonio sitting silent and reserved. We happened

to speak of Aleria, and I put a question about Roman antiquities in

Corsica. Marcantonio suddenly put in his word, and said very gravely

and curtly--"We have no need of the fame of Roman antiquities--that of

our own forefathers is sufficient."

Returning to Marcantonio's house, I found in the room both mother and

daughter, and we drew in round the table in sociable family circle. The

women were mending clothes, were talkative, unconstrained, and _naïve_,

like all Corsicans. The unresting activity of the Corsican women is

well known. Subordinating themselves to the men, and uncomplainingly

accepting a menial position, the whole burden of whatever work is

necessary rests upon them. They share this lot with the women of all

warlike nations; as, for example, of the Servians and Albanians.

I described to them the great cities of the Continent, their usages

and festivals, more particularly some customs of my native country.

They never expressed astonishment, although what they heard was utterly

strange to them, and Giulia had never yet seen a city, not even Bastia.

I asked the girl how old she was. "I am twenty years old," she said.

"That is impossible. You are scarce seventeen."

"She is sixteen years old," said the mother.

"What! do you not know your own birthday, Giulia?"

"No, but it stands in the register, and the Maire will know it."

The Maire, therefore--happy man!--is the only person who can celebrate

the birthday of the pretty Giulia--that is, if he chooses to put his

great old horn-spectacles on his nose, and turn over the register for

it.

"Giulia, how do you amuse yourself? young people must be merry."

"I have always enough to do; my brothers want something every minute;

on Sunday I go to mass."

"What fine clothes will you wear to-morrow?"

"I shall put on the faldetta."

She brought the faldetta from a press, and put it on; the girl looked

very beautiful in it. The faldetta is a long garment, generally black,

the end of which is thrown up behind over the head, so that it has

some resemblance to the hooded cloak of a nun. To elderly women, the

faldetta imparts dignity; when it wraps the form of a young girl, its

ample folds add the charm of mystery.

The women asked me what I was. That was difficult to answer. I took out

my very unartistic sketch-book; and as I turned over its leaves, I told

them I was a painter.

"Have you come into the village," asked Giulia, "to colour the walls?"

I laughed loudly and heartily; the question was an apt criticism of my

Corsican sketches. Marcantonio said very seriously--"Don't; she does

not understand such things."

These Corsican women have as yet no notion of the arts and sciences;

they read no romances, they play the cithern in the twilight, and sing

a melancholy vocero--a beautiful dirge, which, perhaps, they themselves

improvise. But in the little circle of their ideas and feelings,

their nature remains vigorous and healthy as the nature that environs

them--chaste, and pious, and self-balanced, capable of all noble

sacrifice, and such heroic resolves, as the poetry of civilisation

preserves to all time as the highest examples of human magnanimity.

Antigone and Iphigenia can be matched in Corsica. There is not a single

high-souled act of which the record has descended to us from antiquity

but this uncultured people can place a deed of equal heroism by its

side.

In honour of our young Corsican Giulia, I shall relate the following

story. It is historical fact, like every other Corsican tale that I

shall tell.

THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

It was about the end of the year 1768. The French had occupied Oletta,

a considerable village in the district of Nebbio. As from the nature

of its situation it was a post of the highest importance, Paoli put

himself in secret communication with the inhabitants, and formed a plan

for surprising the French garrison and making them prisoners. They were

fifteen hundred in number, and commanded by the Marquis of Arcambal.

But the French were upon their guard; they proclaimed martial law in

Oletta, and maintained a strict and watchful rule, so that the men of

the village did not venture to attempt anything.

Oletta was now still as the grave.

One day a young man named Giulio Saliceti left his village to go into

the Campagna, without the permission of the French guard. On his return

he was seized and thrown into prison; after a short time, however, he

was set at liberty.

The youth left his prison and took his way homewards, full of

resentment at the insult put upon him by the enemy. He was noticed to

mutter something to himself, probably curses directed against the hated

French. A sergeant heard him, and gave him a blow in the face. This

occurred in front of the youth's house, at a window of which one of his

relatives happened to be standing--the Abbot Saliceti namely, whom the

people called Peverino, or Spanish Pepper, from his hot and headlong

temper. When Peverino saw the stroke fall upon his kinsman's face, his

blood boiled in his veins.

Giulio rushed into the house quite out of himself with shame and anger,

and was immediately taken by Peverino into his chamber. After some time

the two men were seen to come out, calm, but ominously serious.

At night, other men secretly entered the house of the Saliceti, sat

together and deliberated. And what they deliberated on was this: they

proposed to blow up the church of Oletta, which the French had turned

into their barracks. They were determined to have revenge and their

liberty.

They dug a mine from Saliceti's house, terminating beneath the church,

and filled it with all the powder they had.

The date fixed for firing the mine was the 13th of February 1769,

towards night.

Giulio had nursed his wrath till there was as little pity in his heart

as in a musket-bullet. "To-morrow!" he said trembling, "to-morrow!

Let me apply the match; they struck me in the face; I will give them a

stroke that shall strike them as high as the clouds. I will blast them

out of Oletta, as if the bolts of heaven had got among them!

"But the women and children, and those who do not know of it? The

explosion will carry away every house in the neighbourhood."

"They must be warned. They must be directed under this or the other

pretext to go to the other end of the village at the hour fixed, and

that in all quietness."

The conspirators gave orders to this effect.

Next evening, when the dreadful hour arrived, old men and young, women,

children, were seen betaking themselves in silence and undefined alarm,

with secrecy and speed, to the other end of the village, and there

assembling.

The suspicions of the French began to be aroused, and a messenger

from General Grand-Maison came galloping in, and communicated in

breathless haste the information which his commander had received. Some

one had betrayed the plot. That instant the French threw themselves

on Saliceti's house and the powder-mine, and crushed the hellish

undertaking.

Saliceti and a few of the conspirators cut their way through the enemy

with desperate courage, and escaped in safety from Oletta. Others,

however, were seized and put in chains. A court-martial condemned

fourteen of these to death by the wheel, and seven unfortunates were

actually broken, in terms of the sentence.

Seven corpses were exposed to public view, in the square before

the Convent of Oletta. No burial was to be allowed them. The French

commandant had issued an order that no one should dare to remove any of

the bodies from the scaffold for interment, under pain of death.

Blank dismay fell upon the village of Oletta. Every heart was chilled

with horror. Not a human being stirred abroad; the fires upon the

hearths were extinguished--no voice was heard but the voice of

weeping. The people remained in their houses, but their thoughts turned

continually to the square before the convent, where the seven corpses

lay upon the scaffold.

The first night came. Maria Gentili Montalti was sitting on her bed in

her chamber. She was not weeping; she sat with her head hanging on her

breast, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Sometimes a profound

sob shook her frame. It seemed to her as if a voice called, through the

stillness of the night, O Marì!

The dead, many a time in the stillness of the night, call the name of

those whom they have loved. Whoever answers, must die.

O Bernardo! cried Maria--for she wished to die.

Bernardo lay before the convent on the scaffold; he was the seventh

and youngest of the dead. He was Maria's lover, and their marriage was

fixed for the following month. Now he lay dead upon the scaffold.

Maria Gentili stood silent in the dark chamber, she listened towards

the side where the convent lay, and her soul held converse with a

spirit. Bernardo seemed to implore of her a Christian burial.

But whoever removed a corpse from the scaffold and buried it, was to be

punished by death. Maria was resolved to bury her beloved and then die.

She softly opened the door of her chamber in order to leave the house.

She passed through the room in which her aged parents slept. She went

to their bedside and listened to their breathing. Then her heart began

to quail, for she was the only child of her parents, and their sole

support, and when she thought how her death by the hand of the public

executioner would bow her father and mother down into the grave, her

soul shrank back in great pain, and she turned, and made a step towards

her chamber.

At that moment she again heard the voice of her dead lover wail: O

Marì! O Marì! I loved thee so well, and now thou forsakest me. In my

mangled body lies the heart that died still loving thee--bury me in the

Church of St. Francis, in the grave of my fathers, O Marì!

Maria opened the door of the house and passed out into the night. With

uncertain footsteps she gained the square of the convent. The night was

gloomy. Sometimes the storm came and swept the clouds away, so that

the moon shone down. When its beams fell upon the convent, it was as

if the light of heaven refused to look upon what it there saw, and the

moon wrapped itself again in the black veil of clouds. For before the

convent a row of seven corpses lay on the red scaffold, and the seventh

was the corpse of a youth.

The owl and the raven screamed upon the tower; they sang the

vocero--the dirge for the dead. A grenadier was walking up and down,

with his musket on his shoulder, not far off. No wonder that he

shuddered to his inmost marrow, and buried his face in his mantle, as

he moved slowly up and down.

Maria had wrapped herself in the black faldetta, that her form might be

the less distinct in the darkness of the night. She breathed a prayer

to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of Sorrows, that she would help her, and

then she walked swiftly to the scaffold. It was the seventh body--she

loosed Bernardo; her heart, and a faint gleam from his dead face, told

her that it was he, even in the dark night. Maria took the dead man

in her arms, upon her shoulder. She had become strong, as if with the

strength of a man. She bore the corpse into the Church of St. Francis.

There she sat down exhausted, on the steps of an altar, over which the

lamp of the Mother of God was burning. The dead Bernardo lay upon her

knees, as the dead Christ once lay upon the knees of Mary. In the south

they call this group Pietà.

Not a sound in the church. The lamp glimmers above the altar. Outside,

a gust of wind that whistles by.

Maria rose. She let the dead Bernardo gently down upon the steps of the

altar. She went to the spot where the grave of Bernardo's parents lay.

She opened the grave. Then she took up the dead body. She kissed him,

and lowered him into the grave, and again shut it. Maria knelt long

before the Mother of God, and prayed that Bernardo's soul might have

peace in heaven; and then she went silently away to her house, and to

her chamber.

When morning broke, Bernardo's corpse was missing from among the dead

bodies before the convent. The news flew through the village, and the

soldiers drummed alarm. It was not doubted that the Leccia family had

removed their kinsman during the night from the scaffold; and instantly

their house was forced, its inmates taken prisoners, and thrown chained

into a jail. Guilty of capital crime, according to the law that had

been proclaimed, they were to suffer the penalty, although they denied

the deed.

Maria Gentili heard in her chamber what had happened. Without saying

a word, she hastened to the house of the Count de Vaux, who had come

to Oletta. She threw herself at his feet, and begged the liberation of

the prisoners. She confessed that it was she who had done that of which

they were supposed to be guilty. "I have buried my betrothed," said

she; "death is my due, here is my head; but restore their freedom to

those that suffer innocently."

The Count at first refused to believe what he heard; for he held it

impossible both that a weak girl should be capable of such heroism,

and that she should have sufficient strength to accomplish what Maria

had accomplished. When he had convinced himself of the truth of her

assertions, a thrill of astonishment passed through him, and he was

moved to tears. "Go," said he, "generous-hearted girl, yourself release

the relations of your lover; and may God reward your heroism!"

On the same day the other six corpses were taken from the scaffold, and

received a Christian burial.

CHAPTER VII.

A RIDE THROUGH THE DISTRICT OF OREZZA TO MOROSAGLIA.

I wished to go from Oreto to Morosaglia, Paoli's native place, through

Orezza. Marcantonio had promised to accompany me, and to provide good

horses. He accordingly awoke me early in the morning, and made ready

to go. He had put on his best clothes, wore a velvet jacket, and had

shaved himself very smoothly. The women fortified us for the journey

with a good breakfast, and we mounted our little Corsican horses, and

rode proudly forth.

It makes my heart glad yet to think of that Sunday morning, and the

ride through this romantic and beautiful land of Orezza--over the

green hills, through cool dells, over gushing brooks, through the

green oak-woods. Far as the eye can reach on every side, those shady,

fragrant chestnut-groves; those giants of trees, in size such as I had

never seen before. Nature has here done everything, man so little. His

chestnuts are often a Corsican's entire estate; and in many instances

he has only six goats and six chestnut-trees, which yield him his

polleta. Government has already entertained the idea of cutting down

the forests of chestnuts, in order to compel the Corsican to till the

ground; but this would amount to starving him. Many of these trees have

trunks twelve feet in thickness. With their full, fragrant foliage,

long, broad, dark leaves, and fibred, light-green fruit-husks, they are

a sight most grateful to the eye.

Beyond the paese of Casalta, we entered a singularly romantic dell,

through which the Fiumalto rushes. You find everywhere here serpentine,

and the exquisite marble called Verde Antico. The engineers called

the little district of Orezza the elysium of geology; the waters of

the stream roll the beautiful stones along with them. Through endless

balsamic groves, up hill and down hill, we rode onwards to Piedicroce,

the principal town of Orezza, celebrated for its medicinal springs; for

Orezza, rich in minerals, is also rich in mineral waters.

Francesco Marmocchi says, in his geography of the island: "Mineral

springs are the invariable characteristic of countries which have been

upheaved by the interior forces. Corsica, which within a limited space

presents the astonishing and varied spectacle of the thousandfold

workings of this ancient struggle between the heated interior of the

earth and its cooled crust, was not likely to form an exception to this

general rule."

Corsica has, accordingly, its cold and its warm mineral springs; and

although these, so far as they have been counted, are numerous, there

can be no doubt that others still remain undiscovered.

The natural phenomena of this beautiful island, and particularly its

mineralogy, have by no means as yet had sufficient attention directed

to them.

Up to the present time, fourteen mineral springs, warm and cold, are

accurately and fully known. The distribution of these salubrious waters

over the surface of the island, more especially in respect to their

temperature, is extremely unequal. The region of the primary granite

possesses eight, all warm, and containing more or less sulphur, except

one; while the primary ophiolitic and calcareous regions possess only

six, one alone of which is warm.

The springs of Orezza, bursting forth at many spots, lie on the right

bank of the Fiumalto. The main spring is the only one that is used;

it is cold, acid, and contains iron. It gushes out of a hill below

Piedicroce in great abundance, from a stone basin. No measures have

been taken for the convenience of strangers visiting the wells; these

walk or ride under their broad parasols down the hills into the green

forest, where they have planted their tents. After a ride of several

hours under the burning sun, and not under a parasol, I found this

vehemently effervescing water most delicious.

Piedicroce lies high. Its slender church-tower looks airily down from

the green hill. The Corsican churches among the mountains frequently

occupy enchantingly beautiful and bold sites. Properly speaking, they

stand already in the heavens; and when the door opens, the clouds and

the angels might walk in along with the congregation.

A majestic thunderstorm was flaming round Piedicroce, and echoed

powerfully from hill to hill. We rode into the paese to escape the

torrents of rain. A young man, fashionably dressed, sprang out of a

house, and invited us to enter his locanda. I found other two gentlemen

within, with daintily-trimmed beard and moustache, and of very active

but polished manners. They immediately wished to know my commands; and

nimble they were in executing them--one whipped eggs, another brought

wood and fire, the third minced meat. The eldest of them had a nobly

chiselled but excessively pale face, with a long Slavonic moustache. So

many cooks to a simple meal, and such extremely genteel ones, I was now

for the first time honoured with. I was utterly amazed till they told

me who they were. They were two fugitive Modenese, and a Hungarian.

The Magyar told me, as he stewed the meat, that he had been seven years

lieutenant-general. "Now I stand here and cook," he added; "but such is

the way of the world, when one has come to be a poor devil in a foreign

country, he must not stand on ceremony. We have set up a locanda here

for the season at the wells, and have made very little by it."

As I looked at his pale face--he had caught fever at Aleria--I felt

touched.

We sat down together, Magyar, Lombard, Corsican, and German, and talked

of old times, and named many names of modern celebrity or notoriety.

How silent many of these become before the one great name, Paoli!

I dare not mention them beside him; the noble citizen, the man of

intellect and action, will not endure their company.

The storm was nearly over, but the mountains still stood plunged in

mist. We mounted our horses in order to cross the hills of San Pietro

and reach Ampugnani. Thunder growled and rolled among the misty

summits, and clouds hung on every side. A wild and dreary sadness

lay heavily on the hills; now and then still a flash of lightning;

mountains as if sunk in a sea of cloud, others stretching themselves

upwards like giants; wherever the veil rends, a rich landscape,

green groves, black villages--all this, as it seemed, flying past the

rider; valley and summit, cloister and tower, hill after hill, like

dream-pictures hanging among clouds. The wild elemental powers, that

sleep fettered in the soul of man, are ready at such moments to burst

their bonds, and rush madly forth. Who has not experienced this mood

on a wild sea, or when wandering through the storm? and what we are

then conscious of is the same elemental power of nature that men call

passion, when it takes a determinate form. Forward, Antonio! Gallop

the little red horses along this misty hill, fast! faster! till clouds,

hills, cloisters, towers, fly with horse and rider. Hark! yonder hangs

a black church-tower, high up among the mists, and the bells peal and

peal Ave Maria--signal for the soul to calm itself.

The villages are here small, picturesquely scattered everywhere among

the hills, lying high or in beautiful green valleys. I counted from one

point so many as seventeen, with as many slender black church-towers.

We passed numbers of people on the road; men of the old historic land

of Orezza and Rostino, noble and powerful forms; their fathers once

formed the guard of Paoli.

At Polveroso, we had a magnificent glimpse of a deep valley, in

the middle of which lies Porta, the principal town of the little

district of Ampugnani, embosomed in chestnuts, now dripping with the

thunder-shower. Here stood formerly the ancient Accia, a bishopric,

not a trace of which remains. Porta is an unusually handsome place,

and many of its little houses resemble elegant villas. The small yellow

church has a pretty façade, and a surprisingly graceful tower stands,

in Tuscan fashion, as isolated campanile or belfry by its side. From

the hill of San Pietro, you look down into the rows of houses, and the

narrow streets that group themselves about the church, as into a trim

little theatre. Porta is the birthplace of Sebastiani.

The mountains now become balder, and more severe in form, losing the

chestnuts that previously adorned them. I found huge thistles growing

by the roadside, large almost as trees, with magnificent, broad,

finely-cut leaves, and hard woody stem. Marcantonio had sunk into

complete silence. The Corsicans speak little, like the Spartans; my

host of Oreto was dumb as Harpocrates. I had ridden with him a whole

day through the mountains, and, from morning till evening had never

been able to draw him into conversation. Only now and then he threw

out some _naïve_ question: "Have you cannons? Have you hells in your

country? Do fruits grow with you? Are you wealthy?"

After Ave Maria, we at length reached the canton of Rostino or

Morosaglia, the country of Paoli, the most illustrious of all the

localities celebrated in Corsican history, and the central point of

the old democratic Terra del Commune. We were still upon the Campagna,

when Marcantonio took leave of me; he was going to pass the night in a

house at some distance, and return home with the horses on the morrow.

He gave me a brotherly kiss, and turned away grave and silent; and I,

happy to find myself in this land of heroes and free men, wandered on

alone towards the convent of Morosaglia. I have still an hour on the

solitary plain, and, before entering Paoli's house, I shall continue

the history of his people and himself at the point where I left off.

CHAPTER VIII.

PASQUALE PAOLI.

"Il cittadin non la città son io."--ALFIERI'S _Timoleon_.

After Pasquale Paoli and his brother Clemens, with their companions,

had left Corsica, the French easily made themselves masters of

the whole island. Only a few straggling guerilla bands protracted

the struggle a while longer among the mountains. Among these, one

noble patriot especially deserves the love and admiration of future

times--the poor parish priest of Guagno--Domenico Leca, of the old

family of Giampolo. He had sworn upon the Gospels to abide true to

freedom, and to die sooner than give up the struggle. When the whole

country had submitted, and the enemy summoned him to lay down his

arms, he declared that he could not violate his oath. He dismissed

those of his people that did not wish any longer to follow him, and

threw himself, with a faithful few, into the hills. For months he

continued the struggle, fighting, however, only when he was attacked,

and tending wounded foes with Christian compassion when they fell into

his hands. He inflicted injury on none except in honourable conflict.

In vain the French called on him to come down, and live unmolested in

his village. The priest of Guagno wandered among the mountains, for he

was resolved to be free; and when all had forsaken him, the goat-herds

gave him shelter and sustenance. But one day he was found dead in a

cave, whence he had gone home to his Master, weary and careworn, and a

free man. A relative of Paoli and friend of Alfieri--Giuseppe Ottaviano

Savelli--has celebrated the memory of the priest of Guagno in a Latin

poem, with the title of _Vir Nemoris_--The Man of the Forest.

Other Corsicans, too, who had gone into exile to Italy, landed here and

there, and attempted, like their forefathers, Vincentello, Renuccio,

Giampolo, and Sampiero, to free the island. None of these attempts

met with any success. Many Corsicans were barbarously dragged off to

prison--many sent to the galleys at Toulon, as if they had been helots

who had revolted against their masters. Abattucci, who had been one

of the last to lay down arms, falsely accused of high treason and

convicted, was condemned in Bastia to branding and the galleys. When

Abattucci was sitting upon the scaffold ready to endure the execution

of the sentence, the executioner shrank from applying the red-hot

iron. "Do your duty," cried a French judge; the man turned round to the

latter, and stretched the iron towards him, as if about to brand the

judge. Some time after, Abattucci was pardoned.

Meanwhile, Count Marbœuf had succeeded the Count de Vaux in

the command of Corsica. His government was on the whole mild and

beneficial; the ancient civic regulations of the Corsicans, and their

statutes, remained in force; the Council of Twelve was restored, and

the administration of justice rendered more efficient. Efforts were

also made to animate agriculture, and the general industry of the now

utterly impoverished country. Marbœuf died in Bastia in 1786, after

governing Corsica for sixteen years.

When the French Revolution broke out, that mighty movement absorbed

all private interests of the Corsicans, and these ardent lovers of

liberty threw themselves with enthusiasm into the current of the new

time. The Corsican deputy, Saliceti, proposed that the island should

be incorporated with France, in order that it might share in her

constitution. This took place, in terms of a decree of the Legislative

Assembly, on the 30th of November 1789, and excited universal

exultation throughout Corsica. Most singular and contradictory was the

turn affairs had taken. The same France, that twenty years before had

sent out her armies to annihilate the liberties and the constitution of

Corsica, now raised that constitution upon her throne!

The Revolution recalled Paoli from his exile. He had gone first to

Tuscany, and thereafter to London, where the court and ministers had

given him an honourable reception. He lived very retired in London,

and little was heard of his life or his employment. Paoli made no stir

when he came to England; the great man who had led the van for Europe

on her new career, withdrew into silence and obscurity in his little

house in Oxford Street. He made no magniloquent speeches. All he could

do was to act like a man, and, when that was no longer permitted him,

be proudly silent. The scholar of Corte had said in his presence, in

the oration from which I have quoted: "If freedom were to be gained

by mere talking, then were the whole world free." Something might be

learned from the wisdom of this young student. When Napoleon, like

a genuine Corsican, taking refuge as a last resource in an appeal to

hospitality, claimed that of England from on board the Bellerophon, he

compared himself to Themistocles when in the position of a suppliant

for protection. He was not entitled to compare himself with the great

citizen of Greece; Pasquale Paoli alone was that exiled Themistocles!

Here are one or two letters of this period:--

PAOLI TO HIS BROTHER CLEMENS,

(_Who had remained in Tuscany._)

"LONDON, _Oct. 3, 1769_.--I have received no letters from

you. I fear they have been intercepted, for our enemies

are very adroit at such things.... I was well received by

the king and queen. The ministers have called upon me. This

reception has displeased certain foreign ministers: I hear

they have lodged protests. I have promised to go on Sunday

into the country to visit the Duke of Gloucester, who is our

warm friend. I hope to obtain something here for the support

of our exiled fellow-countrymen, if Vienna does nothing.

The eyes of people here are beginning to be opened; they

acknowledge the importance of Corsica. The king has spoken

to me very earnestly of the affair; his kindness to me

personally made me feel embarrassed. My reception at court

has almost drawn upon me the displeasure of the opposition;

so that some of them have begun to lampoon me. Our enemies

sought to encourage them, letting it be understood with

a mysterious air, that I had sold our country; that I had

bought an estate in Switzerland with French gold, that our

property had not been touched by the French; and that they

had an understanding with these ministers, as they too

are sold to France. But I believe that all are now better

informed; and every one approved of my resolution not to

mix myself up with the designs of parties; but to further

by all means that for which it is my duty to labour, and for

the advancement of which all can unite, without compromising

their individual relations.

"Send me an accurate list of all our friends who have gone

into banishment--we must not be afraid of expense; and send

me news of Corsica. The letters must come under the addresses

of private friends, otherwise they do not reach me. I enjoy

perfect health. This climate appears to me as yet very mild.

"The Campagna is always quite green. He who has not seen it

can have no conception of the loveliness of spring. The soil

of England is crisped like the waves of the sea when the wind

moves them lightly. Men here, though excited by political

faction, live, as far as regards overt acts of violence, as

if they were the most intimate friends: they are benevolent,

sensible, generous in all things; and they are happy under

a constitution than which there can be no better. This city

is a world; and it is without doubt a finer town than all

the rest put together. Fleets seem to enter its river every

moment; I believe that Rome was neither greater nor richer.

What we in Corsica reckon in paoli, people here reckon in

guineas, that is, in louis-d'ors. I have written for a bill

of exchange; I have refused to hear of contributions intended

for me personally, till I know what conclusion they have come

to in regard to the others; but I know that their intentions

are good. In case they are obliged to temporize, finding

their hands tied at present, they will be ready the first war

that breaks out. I greet all; live happy, and do not think on

me."

CATHERINE OF RUSSIA TO PASQUALE PAOLI.

"ST. PETERSBURG, _April 27, 1770_.

"MONSIEUR GENERAL DE PAOLI!--I have received your letter from

London, of the 15th February. All that Count Alexis Orloff

has let you know of my good intentions towards you, Monsieur,

is a result of the feelings with which your magnanimity,

and the high-spirited and noble manner in which you have

defended your country, have inspired me. I am acquainted with

the details of your residence in Pisa, and with this among

the rest, that you gained the esteem of all those who had

opportunities of intercourse with you. That is the reward of

virtue, in whatever situation it may find itself; be assured

that I shall always entertain the liveliest sympathy for

yours.

"The motive of your journey to England, was a natural

consequence of your sentiments with regard to your country.

Nothing is wanting to your good cause but favourable

circumstances. The natural interests of our empire,

connected as they are with those of Great Britain; the

mutual friendship between the two nations which results from

this; the reception which my fleets have met with on the

same account, and which my ships in the Mediterranean, and

the commerce of Russia, would have to expect from a free

people in friendly relations with my own, supply motives

which cannot but be favourable to you. You may, therefore,

be assured, Monsieur, that I shall not let slip the

opportunities which will probably occur, of rendering you all

the good services that political conjunctures may allow.

"The Turks have declared against me the most unjust war that

perhaps ever _has_ been declared. At the present moment I am

only able to defend myself. The blessing of Heaven, which

has hitherto accompanied my cause, and which I pray God

to continue to me, shows sufficiently that justice cannot

be long suppressed, and that patience, hope, and courage,

though the world is full of the most difficult situations,

nevertheless attain their aim. I receive with pleasure,

Monsieur, the assurances of regard which you are pleased to

express, and I beg you will be convinced of the esteem with

which I am,

"CATHERINE."

Paoli had lived twenty long years an exile in London, when he

was summoned back to his native country. The Corsicans sent him a

deputation, and the French National Assembly, in a pompous address,

invited him to return.

On the 3d of April 1790, Paoli came for the first time to Paris. He was

fêted here as the Washington of Europe, and Lafayette was constantly at

his side. The National Assembly received him with stormy acclamations,

and elaborate oratory. His reply was as follows:--

"Messieurs, this is the fairest and happiest day of my life.

I have spent my years in striving after liberty, and I find

here its noblest spectacle. I left my country in slavery, I

find it now in freedom. What more remains for me to desire?

After an absence of twenty years, I know not what alterations

tyranny may have produced among my countrymen; ah! it cannot

have been otherwise than fatal, for oppression demoralizes.

But in removing, as you have done, the chains from the

Corsicans, you have restored to them their ancient virtue.

Now that I am returning to my native country, you need

entertain no doubts as to the nature of my sentiments. You

have been magnanimous towards me, and I was never a slave.

My past conduct, which you have honoured with your approval,

is the pledge of my future course of action: my whole life,

I may say, has been an unbroken oath to liberty; it seems,

therefore, as if I had already sworn allegiance to the

constitution which you have established; but it still remains

for me to give my oath to the nation which adopts me, and to

the monarch whom I now acknowledge. This is the favour which

I desire of the august Assembly."

In the club of the Friends of the Constitution, Robespierre thus

addressed Paoli: "Ah! there was a time when we sought to crush freedom

in its last retreats. Yet no! that was the crime of despotism--the

French people have wiped away the stain. What ample atonement to

conquered Corsica, and injured mankind! Noble citizens, you defended

liberty at a time when I did not so much as venture to hope for it. You

have suffered for liberty; you now triumph with it, and your triumph is

ours. Let us unite to preserve it for ever, and may its base opponents

turn pale with fear at the sight of our sacred league."

Paoli had no foreboding of the position into which the course of events

was yet to bring him, in relation to this same France, or that he was

once more to stand opposed to her as a foe. He left for Corsica. In

Marseilles he was again received by a Corsican deputation, with the

members of which came the two young club-leaders of Ajaccio--Joseph and

Napoleon Bonaparte. Paoli wept as he landed on Cape Corso and kissed

the soil of his native country; he was conducted in triumph from canton

to canton; and the Te Deum was sung throughout the island.

Paoli, as President of the Assembly, and Lieutenant-general of the

Corsican National Guard, now devoted himself entirely to the affairs

of his country; in the year 1791 he also undertook the command of

the Division, and of the island. Although the French Revolution had

silenced the special interests of the Corsicans, they began again to

demand attention, and this was particularly felt by Paoli, among whose

virtues patriotism was always uppermost. Paoli could never transform

himself into a Frenchman, or forget that his people had possessed

independence, and its own constitution. A coolness sprang up between

him and certain parties in the island; the aristocratic French party,

namely, on the one hand, composed of such men as Gaffori, Rossi,

Peretti, and Buttafuoco; and the extreme democrats on the other, who

saw the welfare of the world nowhere but in the whirl of the French

Revolution, such as the Bonapartes, Saliceti, and Arenas.

The execution of the king, and the wild and extravagant procedure of

the popular leaders in Paris, shocked the philanthropic Paoli. He

gradually broke with France, and the rupture became manifest after

the unsuccessful French expedition from Corsica against Sardinia,

the failure of which was attributed to Paoli. His opponents had

lodged a formal accusation against him and Pozzo di Borgo, the

Procurator-general, libelling them as Particularists, who wished to

separate the island from France.

The Convention summoned him to appear before its bar and answer the

accusations, and sent Saliceti, Lacombe, and Delcher, as commissaries

to the island. Paoli, however, refused to obey the decree, and sent a

dignified and firm address to the Convention, in which he repelled the

imputations made upon him, and complained of their forcing a judicial

investigation upon an aged man, and a martyr for freedom. Was a Paoli

to stand in a court composed of windy declaimers and play-actors, and

then lay his head, grown gray in heroism, beneath the knife of the

guillotine? Was this to be the end of a life that had produced such

noble fruits?

The result of this refusal to obey the orders of the Convention, was

the complete revolt of Paoli and the Paolists from France. The patriots

prepared for a struggle, and published such enactments as plainly

intimated that they wished Corsica to be considered as separated from

France. The commissaries hastened home to Paris; and after receiving

their report, the Convention declared Paoli guilty of high treason,

and placed him beyond the protection of the law. The island was split

into two hostile camps, the patriots and the republicans, and already

fighting had commenced.

Meanwhile Paoli had formed the plan of placing the island under the

protection of the English Government. No course lay nearer or was

more natural than this. He had already entered into communication

with Admiral Hood, who commanded the English fleet before Toulon, and

now with his ships appeared on the Corsican coast. He landed near

Fiorenzo on the 2d of February. This fortress fell after a severe

bombardment; and the commandant of Bastia, General Antonio Gentili,

capitulated. Calvi alone, which had withstood in previous centuries so

many assaults, still held out, though the English bombs made frightful

havoc in the little town, and all but reduced it to a heap of ruins.

At length, on the 20th of July 1794, the fortress surrendered; the

commandant, Casabianca, capitulated, and embarked with his troops

for France. As Bonifazio and Ajaccio were already in the hands of the

Paolists, the Republicans could no longer maintain a footing on the

island. They emigrated, and Paoli and the English remained undisputed

masters of Corsica.

A general assembly now declared the island completely severed from

France, and placed it under the protection of England. England,

however, did not content herself with a mere right of protection--she

claimed the sovereignty of Corsica; and this became the occasion of

a rupture between Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo, whom Sir Gilbert Elliot

had won for the English side. On the 10th of June 1794, the Corsicans

declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain; that

it was, however, to remain independent, and be governed by a viceroy

according to its own constitution.

Paoli had counted on the English king's naming him viceroy; but he was

deceived, for Gilbert Elliot was sent to Corsica in this capacity--a

serious blunder, since Elliot was totally unacquainted with the

condition of the island, and his appointment could not but deeply wound

Paoli.

The gray-haired man immediately withdrew into private life; and as

Elliot saw that his relation to the English, already unpleasant, must

soon become dangerous, he wrote to George III. that the removal of

Pasquale was desirable. This was accomplished. The King of England,

in a friendly letter, invited Paoli to come to London, and spend his

remaining days in honour at the court. Paoli was in his own house at

Morosaglia when he received the letter. Sadly he now proceeded to San

Fiorenzo, where he embarked, and left his country for the third and

last time, in October 1795. The great man shared the same fate as most

of the legislators and popular leaders of antiquity; he died rewarded

with ingratitude, unhappy, and in exile. The two greatest men of

Corsica, Pasquale and Napoleon, foes to each other, were both to end

their days and be buried on British territory.

The English government of Corsica--from ignorance of the country very

badly conducted--lasted only a short time. As soon as Napoleon found

himself victorious in Italy, he despatched Generals Gentili and Casalta

with troops to the island; and scarcely had they made their appearance,

when the Corsicans, imbittered by the banishment of Paoli and their

other grievances, rose against the English. In almost inexplicable

haste they relinquished the island, from whose people they were

separated by wide and ineradicable differences in national character;

and by November 1796, not a single Englishman remained in Corsica. The

island was now again under the supremacy of France.

Pasquale Paoli lived to see Napoleon Emperor. Fate granted him at least

the satisfaction of seeing a countryman of his own the most prominent

and the most powerful actor in European history. After passing twelve

years more of exile in London, he died peacefully on the 5th of

February 1807, at the age of eighty-two, his mind to the last occupied

with thoughts of the people whom he had so warmly loved. He was the

patriarch and oldest legislator of European liberty. In his last letter

to his friend Padovani, the noble old man, reviewing his life, says

humbly:--

"I have lived long enough; and if it were granted me to begin my life

anew, I should reject the gift, unless it were accompanied with the

intelligent cognisance of my past life, that I might repair the errors

and follies by which it has been marked."

One of the Corsican exiles announced his death to his countrymen in the

following letter:--

GIACOMORSI TO SIGNOR PADOVANI.

"LONDON, _July 2, 1807_.

"It is, alas! true that the newspapers were correctly

informed when they published the death of the poor General.

He fell ill on Monday the 2d of February, about half-past

eight in the evening, and at half-past eleven on the night

of Thursday he died in my arms. He leaves to the University

at Corte salaries of fifty pounds a year each, for four

professors; and another mastership for the School of Rostino,

which is to be founded in Morosaglia.

"On the 13th of February, he was buried in St. Pancras, where

almost all Catholics are interred. His funeral will have cost

nearly five hundred pounds. About the middle of last April,

I and Dr. Barnabi went to Westminster Abbey to find a spot

where we shall erect a monument to him with his bust.

"Paoli said when dying:--My nephews have little to hope for;

but I shall bequeath to them, for their consolation, and as

something to remember me by, this saying from the Bible--'I

have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the

righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"

CHAPTER IX.

PAOLI'S BIRTHPLACE.

It was late when I reached Rostino, or Morosaglia. Under this name is

understood, not a single paese, but a number of villages scattered

among the rude, stern hills. I found my way with difficulty through

these little neighbour hamlets to the convent of Morosaglia, climbing

rough paths over rocks, and again descending under gigantic chestnuts.

A locanda stands opposite the convent, a rare phenomenon in the country

districts of Corsica. I found there a lively and intelligent young man,

who informed me he was director of the Paoli School, and promised me

his assistance for the following day.

In the morning, I went to the little village of Stretta, where

the three Paolis were born. One must see this Casa Paoli in order

rightly to comprehend the history of the Corsicans, and award a just

admiration to these singular men. The house is a very wretched,

black, village-cabin, standing on a granite rock; a brooklet runs

immediately past the door; it is a rude structure of stone, with narrow

apertures in the walls, such as are seen in towers; the windows few,

unsymmetrically disposed, unglazed, with wooden shutters, as in the

time of Pasquale. When the Corsicans had elected him their general, and

he was expected home from Naples, Clemens had glass put in the windows

of the sitting-room, in order to make the parental abode somewhat

more comfortable for his brother. But Paoli had no sooner entered and

remarked the luxurious alteration, than he broke every pane with his

stick, saying that he did not mean to live in his father's house like a

Duke, but like a born Corsican. The windows still remain without glass;

the eye overlooks from them the magnificent panorama of the mountains

of Niolo, as far as the towering Monte Rotondo.

A relative of Paoli's--a simple country girl of the Tommasi

family--took me into the house. Everything in it wears the stamp of

humble peasant life. You mount a steep wooden stair to the mean rooms,

in which Paoli's wooden table and wooden seat still stand. With joy,

I saw myself in the little chamber in which Pasquale was born; my

emotions on this spot were more lively and more agreeable than in the

birth-chamber of Napoleon.

Once more that fine face, with its classic, grave, and dignified

features, rose before me, and along with it the forms of a noble father

and a heroic brother. In this little room Pasquale came to the world in

April of the year 1724. His mother was Dionisia Valentina, an excellent

woman from a village near Ponte Nuovo--the spot so fatal to her son.

His father, Hyacinth, we know already. He had been a physician, and

became general of the Corsicans along with Ceccaldi and Giafferi. He

was distinguished by exalted virtues, and was worthy of the renown

that attaches to his name as the father of two such sons. Hyacinth had

great oratorical powers, and some reputation as a poet. Amid the din of

arms those powerful spirits had still time and genial force enough to

rise free above the actual circumstances of their condition, and sing

war-hymns, like Tyrtæus.

Here is a sonnet addressed by Hyacinth to the brave Giafferi, after the

battle of Borgo:--

"To crown unconquer'd Cyrnus' hero-son,

See death descend, and destiny bend low;

Vanquish'd Ligurians, by their sighs of wo,

Swelling fame's trumpet with a louder tone.

Scarce was the passage of the Golo won,

Than in their fort of strength he storm'd the foe.

Perils, superior numbers scorning so,

Vict'ry still follow'd where his arms had shone.

Chosen by Cyrnus, fate the choice approved,

Trusting the mighty conflict to his sword,

Which Europe rose to watch, and watching stands.

By that sword's flash, e'en fate itself is moved;

Thankless Liguria has its stroke deplored,

While Cyrnus takes her sceptre from his hands."

Such men are as if moulded of Greek bronze. They are the men of

Plutarch, and resemble Aristides, Epaminondas, and Timoleon. They

could resign themselves to privation, and sacrifice their interests

and their lives; they were simple, sincere, stout-hearted citizens of

their country. They had become great by facts, not by theories, and the

high nobility of their principles had a basis, positive and real, in

their actions and experiences. If we are to express the entire nature

of these men in one word, that word is Virtue, and they were worthy of

virtue's fairest reward--Freedom.

My glance falls upon the portrait of Pasquale. I could not wish to

imagine him otherwise. His head is large and regular; his brow arched

and high, the hair long and flowing; his eyebrows bushy, falling a

little down into the eyes, as if swift to contract and frown; but the

blue eyes are luminous, large, and free--full of clear, perceptive

intellect; and an air of gentleness, dignity, and benevolence, pervades

the beardless, open countenance.

One of my greatest pleasures is to look at portraits and busts of great

men. Four periods of these attract and reward our examination most--the

heads of Greece; the Roman heads; the heads of the great fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries; and the heads of the eighteenth century. It would

be an almost endless labour to arrange by themselves the busts of the

great men of the eighteenth century; but such a Museum would richly

reward the trouble. When I see a certain group of these together, it

seems to me as if I recognised a family resemblance prevailing in it--a

resemblance arising from the presence in each, of one and the same

spiritual principle--Pasquale, Washington, Franklin, Vico, Genovesi,

Filangieri, Herder, Pestalozzi, Lessing.

Pasquale's head is strikingly like that of Alfieri. Although the

latter, like Byron, aristocratic, proud, and unbendingly egotistic,

widely differs in many respects from his contemporary, Pasquale--the

peaceful, philanthrophic citizen; he had nevertheless a soul full of

a marvellous energy, and burning with the hatred of tyranny. He could

understand such a nature as Paoli's better than Frederick the Great.

Frederick once sent to this house a present for Paoli--a sword bearing

the inscription, _Libertas_, _Patria_. Away in distant Prussia, the

great king took Pasquale for an unusually able soldier. He was no

soldier; his brother Clemens was his sword; he was the thinking head--a

citizen and a strong and high-hearted man. Alfieri comprehended him

better, he dedicated his _Timoleon_ to him, and sent him the poem with

this letter:--

TO SIGNOR PASQUALE PAOLI, THE NOBLE DEFENDER OF CORSICA.

"To write tragedies on the subject of liberty, in the

language of a country which does not possess liberty, will

perhaps, with justice, appear mere folly to those who look

no further than the present. But he who draws conclusions

for the future from the constant vicissitudes of the past,

cannot pronounce such a rash judgment. I therefore dedicate

this my tragedy to you, as one of the enlightened few--one

who, because he can form the most correct idea of other

times, other nations, and high principles--is also worthy to

have been born and to have been active in a less effeminate

century than ours. Although it has not been permitted you

to give your country its freedom, I do not, as the mob is

wont to do, judge of men according to their success, but

according to their actions, and hold you entirely worthy to

listen to the sentiments of _Timoleon_, as sentiments which

you are thoroughly able to understand, and with which you can

sympathize.

VITTORIA ALFIERI."

Alfieri inscribed on the copy of his tragedy which he sent to Pasquale,

the following verses:--

"To Paoli, the noble Corsican

Who made himself the teacher and the friend

Of the young France.

Thou with the sword hast tried, I with the pen,

In vain to rouse our Italy from slumber.

Now read; perchance my hand interprets rightly

The meaning of thy heart."

Alfieri exhibited much delicacy of perception in dedicating the

_Timoleon_ to Paoli--the tragedy of a republican, who had once, in

the neighbouring Sicily, given wise democratic laws to a liberated

people, and then died as a private citizen. Plutarch was a favourite

author with Paoli, as with most of the great men of the eighteenth

century, and Epaminondas was his favourite hero; the two were kindred

natures--both despised pomp and expensive living, and did not imagine

that their patriotic services and endeavours were incompatible with the

outward style of citizens and commoners. Pasquale was fond of reading:

he had a choice library, and his memory was retentive. An old man

told me that once, when as a boy he was walking along the road with a

school-fellow, and reciting a passage from Virgil, Paoli accidentally

came up behind him, slapped him on the shoulder, and proceeded himself

with the passage.

Many particulars of Paoli's habits are still remembered by the people

here. The old men have seen him walking about under these chestnuts, in

a long green, gold-laced coat,[N] and a vest of brown Corsican cloth.

When he showed himself, he was always surrounded by his peasantry,

whom he treated as equals. He was accessible to all, and he maintained

a lively recollection of an occasion when he had deeply to repent his

having shut himself up for an hour. It was one day during the last

struggle for independence; he was in Sollacaro, embarrassed with an

accumulation of business, and had ordered the sentry to allow no one

admission. After some time a woman appeared, accompanied by an armed

youth. The woman was in mourning, wrapped in the faldetta, and wore

round her neck a black ribbon, to which a Moor's head, in silver--the

Corsican arms--was attached. She attempted to enter--the sentry

repelled her. Paoli, hearing a noise, opened the door, and demanded

hastily and imperiously what she wanted. The woman said with mournful

calmness: "Signor, be so good as listen to me. I was the mother of two

sons; the one fell at the Tower of Girolata; the other stands here. I

come to give him to his country, that he may supply the place of his

dead brother." She turned to the youth, and said to him: "My son, do

not forget that you are more your country's child than mine." The woman

went away. Paoli stood a moment as if thunderstruck; then he sprang

after her, embraced with emotion mother and son, and introduced them to

his officers. Paoli said afterwards that he never felt so embarrassed

as before that noble-hearted woman.

He never married; his people were his family. His only niece, the

daughter of his brother Clemens, was married to a Corsican called

Barbaggi. But Paoli himself, capable of all the virtues of friendship,

was not without a noble female friend, a woman of talent and glowing

patriotism, to whom the greatest men of the country confided their

political ideas and plans. This Corsican Roland, however, kept no

_salon_; she was a nun, of the noble house of Rivarola. A single

circumstance evinces the ardent sympathy of this nun for the patriotic

struggles of her countrymen; after Achille Murati's bold conquest

of Capraja, she herself, in her exultation at the success of the

enterprise, went over to the island, as if to take possession of it

in the name of Paoli. Many of Pasquale's letters are addressed to the

Signora Monaca, and are altogether occupied with politics, as if they

had been written to a man.

The incredible activity of Paoli appears from his collected letters.

The talented Italian Tommaseo (at present living in exile in Corfu)

has published a large volume containing the most important of these.

They are highly interesting, and exhibit a manly, vigorous, and clear

intellect. Paoli disliked writing--he dictated, like Napoleon; he could

not sit long, his continually active mind allowed him no rest. It is

said of him that he never knew the date; that he could read the future,

and that he frequently had visions.

Paoli's memory is very sacred with his people. Napoleon elates the

soul of the Corsican with pride, because he was his brother; but when

you name the name of Paoli, his eye brightens like that of a son,

at the mention of a noble departed father. It is impossible for a

man to be more loved and honoured by a whole nation after his death

than Pasquale Paoli; and if posthumous fame is a second life, then

Corsica's and Italy's greatest man of the eighteenth century lives a

thousandfold--yes, lives in every Corsican heart, from the tottering

graybeard who knew him in his youth, to the child on whose soul his

high example is impressed. No greater name can be given to a man than

"Father of his country." Flattery has often abused it and made it

ridiculous; among the Corsicans I saw that it could also be applied

with truth and justice.

Paoli contrasts with Napoleon, as philanthropy with self-love. No

curses of the dead rise to execrate his name. At the nod of Napoleon,

millions of human beings were murdered for the sake of fame and power.

The blood that Paoli shed, flowed for freedom, and his country gave it

freely as that mother-bird that wounds her breast to give her fainting

brood to drink.

No battle-field makes Paoli's name illustrious; but his memory is here

honoured by the foundation-school of Morosaglia, and this fame seems

to me more human and more beautiful than the fame of Marengo or the

Pyramids.

I visited this school, the bequest of the noble patriot. The old

convent supplies an edifice. It consists of two classes; the lower

containing one hundred and fifty scholars, the upper about forty.

But two teachers are insufficient for the large number of pupils.

The rector of the lower class was so friendly as to hold a little

examination in my presence. I here again remarked the _naïveté_ of

the Corsican character, as displayed by the boys. There were upwards

of a hundred, between the ages of six and fourteen, separated into

divisions, wild, brown little fellows, tattered and torn, unwashed, all

with their caps on their heads. Some wore crosses of honour suspended

on red ribbons; and these looked comical enough on the breasts of the

little brown rascals--sitting, perhaps, with their heads supported

between their two fists, and staring, frank and free, with their black

eyes at all within range--proud, probably, of being Paoli scholars.

These honours are distributed every Saturday, and worn by the pupil for

a week; a silly, and at the same time, hurtful French practice, which

tends to encourage bad passions, and to drive the Corsican--in whom

nature has already implanted an unusual thirst for distinction--even

in his boyhood, to a false ambition. These young Spartans were reading

Telemachus. On my requesting the rector to allow them to translate

the French into Italian, that I might see how they were at home in

their mother-tongue, he excused himself with the express prohibition

of the Government, which "does not permit Italian in the schools." The

branches taught were writing, reading, arithmetic, and the elements of

geography and biblical history.

The schoolroom of the lower class is the chapter-hall of the old

convent in which Clemens Paoli dreamed away the closing days of his

life. Such a spacious, airy Aula as that in which these Corsican

youngsters pursue their studies, with the view from its windows of the

mighty hills of Niolo, and the battle-fields of their sires, would

be an improvement in many a German university. The heroic grandeur

of external nature in Corsica seems to me to form, along with the

recollections of their past history, the great source of cultivation

for the Corsican people; and there is no little importance in the

glance which that Corsican boy is now fixing on the portrait yonder on

the wall--for it is the portrait of Pasquale Paoli.

CHAPTER X.

CLEMENS PAOLI.

"Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to

war, and my fingers to fight."--Psalm cxliv.

The convent of Morosaglia is perhaps the most venerable monument of

Corsican history. The hoary structure as it stands there, brown and

gloomy, with the tall, frowning pile of its campanile by its side,

seems itself a tradition in stone. It was formerly a Franciscan

cloister. Here, frequently, the Corsican parliaments were held. Here

Pasquale had his rooms, his bureaus, and often, during the summer,

he was to be seen among the monks--who, when the time came, did not

shrink from carrying the crucifix into the fight, at the head of their

countrymen. The same convent was also a favourite residence of his

brave brother Clemens, and he died here, in one of the cells, in the

year 1793.

Clemens Paoli is a highly remarkable character. He resembles one of

the Maccabees, or a crusader glowing with religious fervour. He was

the eldest son of Hyacinth. He had served with distinction as a soldier

in Naples; then he was made one of the generals of the Corsicans. But

state affairs did not accord with his enthusiastic turn of mind. When

his brother was placed at the head of the Government he withdrew into

private life, assumed the garb of the Tertiaries, and buried himself in

religious contemplation. Like Joshua, he lay entranced in prayer before

the Lord, and rose from prayer to rush into battle, for the Lord had

given his foes into his hand. He was the mightiest in fight, and the

humblest before God. His gloomy nature has something in it prophetic,

flaming, self-abasing, like that of Ali.

Wherever the danger was greatest, he appeared like an avenging angel.

He rescued his brother at the convent of Bozio, when he was besieged

there by Marius Matra; he expelled the Genoese from the district of

Orezza, after a frightful conflict. He took San Pellegrino and San

Fiorenzo; in innumerable fights he came off victorious. When the

Genoese assaulted the fortified camp at Furiani with their entire

force, Clemens remained for fifty-six days firm and unsubdued among the

ruins, though the whole village was a heap of ashes. A thousand bombs

fell around him, but he prayed to the God of hosts, and did not flinch,

and victory was on his side.

Corsica owed her freedom to Pasquale, as the man who organized her

resources; but to Clemens alone as the soldier who won it with his

sword. He signalized himself also subsequently in the campaign of 1769,

by the most splendid deeds of arms. He gained the glorious victory of

Borgo; he fought desperately at Ponte Nuovo, and when all was lost,

he hastened to rescue his brother. He threw himself with a handful

of brave followers in the direction of Niolo, to intercept General

Narbonne, and protect his brother's flight. As soon as he had succeeded

in this, he hastened to Pasquale at Bastelica, and sorrowfully embarked

with him for Tuscany.

He did not go to England. He remained in Tuscany; for the strange

language of a foreign country would have deepened his affliction. Among

the monks in the beautiful, solitary cloister of Vallombrosa, he sank

again into fervent prayer and severe penance; and no one who saw this

monk lying in prayer upon his knees, could have recognised in him the

hero of patriot struggles, and the soldier terrible in fight.

After twenty years of cloister-life in Tuscany, Clemens returned

shortly before his brother to Corsica. Once more his heart glowed

with the hope of freedom for his country; but events soon taught the

grayhaired hero that Corsica was lost for ever. In sorrow and penance

he died in December of the same year in which his brother was summoned

before the Convention, to answer the charge of high treason.

In Clemens, patriotism had become a cultus and a religion. A great

and holy passion, stirred to an intense glow, is in itself religious;

when it takes possession of a people, more especially when it does

so in periods of calamity and severe pressure, it expresses itself

as religious worship. The priests in those days preached battle from

every pulpit, the monks marched with the ranks into the fight, and the

crucifixes served instead of standards. The parliaments were generally

held in convents, as if God himself were to preside over them, and

once, as we saw in their history, the Corsicans by a decree of their

Assembly placed the country under the protection of the Holy Virgin.

Pasquale, too, was religious. I saw in his house the little dark

room which he had made into a chapel; it had been allowed to remain

unchanged. He there prayed daily to God. But Clemens lay for six

or seven hours each day in prayer. He prayed even in the thick of

battle--a figure terrible to look on, with his beads in one hand and

his musket in the other, clad like the meanest Corsican, and not to be

recognised save by his great fiery eyes and bushy eyebrows. It is said

of him that he could load his piece with furious rapidity, and that,

always sure of his aim, he first prayed for mercy to the soul of the

man he was about to shoot, then crying: "Poor mother!" he sacrificed

his foe to the God of freedom. When the battle was over, he was gentle

and mild, but always grave and profoundly melancholy. A frequent saying

of his was: "My blood and my life are my country's; my soul and my

thoughts are my God's."

Men of Pasquale's type are to be sought among the Greeks; but the types

of Clemens among the Maccabees. He was not one of Plutarch's heroes; he

was a hero of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER XI.

THE OLD HERMIT.

I had heard in Stretta that a countryman of mine was living there, a

Prussian--a strange old man, lame, and obliged to use crutches. The

townspeople had also informed him of my arrival. Just as I was leaving

the chamber in which Clemens Paoli had died, lost in meditation on the

character of this God-fearing old hero, my lame countryman came hopping

up to me, and shook hands with me in the honest and hearty German

style. I had breakfast set for us; we sat down, and I listened for

several hours to the curious stories of old Augustine of Nordhausen.

"My father," he said, "was a Protestant clergyman, and wished

to educate me in the Lutheran faith; but from my childhood I was

dissatisfied with Protestantism, and saw well that the Lutheran

persuasion was a vile corruption of the only true church--the church

in spirit and in truth. I took it into my head to become a missionary.

I went to the Latin School in Nordhausen, and remained there until I

entered the classes of logic and rhetoric. And after learning rhetoric,

I left my native country to go to the beautiful land of Italy, to a

Trappist convent at Casamari, where I held my peace for eleven years."

"But, friend Augustine, how were you able to endure that?"

"Well, it needs a merry heart to bear it: a melancholy man becomes mad

among the Trappists. I understood the carpenter-trade, and worked at

it all day, beguiling my weariness by singing songs to myself in my

heart."

"What had you to eat in the convent?"

"Two platefuls of broth, as much bread as we liked, and half a bottle

of wine. I ate little, but I never left a drop of wine in my flask.

God be praised for the excellent wine! The brother on my right was

always hungry, and ate his two platefuls of broth and five rolls to the

bargain."

"Have you ever seen Pope Pio Nono?"

"Yes, and spoken with him too, just like a friend. He was then bishop

in Rieti; and, one Good-Friday, I went thither in my capote--I was in a

different convent then--to fetch the holy oil. I was at that time very

ill. The Pope kissed my capote, when I went to him in the evening to

take my leave. 'Fra Agostino,' said he, 'you are sick, you must have

something to eat.' 'My lord bishop,' said I, 'I never saw a brother

eat on Good-Friday.' 'No matter, I give you a dispensation; I see you

are sick.' And he sent to the best inn in the town, and they brought me

half a fowl, some soup, wine, and confectionary; and the bishop made me

sit down to table with him."

"What! did the holy Father eat on Good-Friday?"

"Only three nuts and three figs. After this I grew worse, and removed

to Toscana. But one day I ceased to find pleasure in the ways of men;

their deeds were hateful to me. I resolved to become a hermit. So I

took my tools, purchased a few necessaries, and sailed to the little

island of Monte Cristo. The island is nine miles[O] round; not a living

thing dwells on it but wild goats, serpents, and rats. In ancient times

the Emperor Diocletian banished Saint Mamilian there--the Archbishop

of Palermo. The good saint built a church upon the island; a convent

also was afterwards erected. Fifty monks once lived there--first

Benedictines, then Cistercians, and afterwards Carthusians of the Order

of St. Bruno. The monks of Monte Cristo built many hospitals, and did

much good in Toscana; the hospital of Maria Novella in Florence, too,

was founded by them. Then, you see, came the Saracens, and carried off

the monks of Monte Cristo with their oxen and their servants; the goats

they could not catch--they escaped to the mountains, and have ever

since lived wild among rocks."

"Did you stay in the old convent?"

"No, it is in ruins. I lived in a cave, which I fitted up with the help

of my tools. I built a wall, too, before the mouth of it."

"How did you spend the long days? You prayed a great deal, I suppose?"

"Ah, no! I am no Pharisee. One can't pray much. Whatever God wills

must happen. I had my flute; and I amused myself with shooting the wild

goats; or explored the island for stones and plants; or watched the sea

as it rose and fell upon the rocks. I had books to read, too."

"Such as?"--

"The works of the Jesuit Paul Pater Segneri."

"What grows upon the island?"

"Nothing but heath and bilberries. There are one or two pretty little

green valleys, and all the rest is gray rock. A Sardinian once visited

the island, and gave me some seeds; so I grew a few vegetables and

planted some trees."

"Are there any fine kinds of stone to be found there?"

"Well, there is beautiful granite, and black tourmaline, which is

found in a white stone; and I also discovered three different kinds of

garnets. At last I fell sick in Monte Cristo--sick to death, when there

happily arrived a number of Tuscans, who carried me to the mainland.

I have now been eleven years in this cursed island, living among

scoundrels--thorough scoundrels. The doctors sent me here; but I hope

to see Italy again before a year is over. There is no country in the

world like Italy to live in, and they are a fine people the Italians.

I am growing old, I have to go upon crutches; and I one day said to

myself, 'What am I to do? I must soon give up my joiner's work, but

I cannot beg;' so I went and roamed about the mountains, and by good

fortune discovered Negroponte."

"Negroponte? what is that?"

"The clay with which they make pipes in the island of Negroponte;

we call it _meerschaum_ at home, you know. Ah, it is a beautiful

earth--the very flower of minerals. The Negroponte here is as good as

that in Turkey, and when I have my pipes finished, I shall be able to

say that I am the first Christian that has ever worked in it."

Old Augustine would not let me off till I had paid a visit to his

laboratory. He had established himself in one of the rooms formerly

occupied by poor Clemens Paoli, and pointed out to me with pride his

Negroponte and the pipes he had been engaged in making, and which he

had laid in the sun to dry.

I believe that, once in his life, there comes to every man a time when

he would fain leave the society of men, and go into the green woods and

be a hermit, and an hour when his soul would gladly find rest even in

the religious silence of the Trappist.

I have here told my reader the brief story of old Augustine's life,

because it attracted me so strongly at the time, and seemed to me a

true specimen of German character.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PONTE NUOVO.

"Gallia vicisti! profuso turpiter auro

Armis pauca, dolo plurima, jure nihil!"--_The Corsicans._

I left Morosaglia before Ave Maria, to descend the hills to Ponte

Nuovo. Near the battle-field is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia,

where the Diligence from Bastia arrives after midnight, and with it I

intended to return to Bastia.

The evening was beautiful and clear--the stillness of the mountain

solitude stimulated thought. The twilight is here very short. Hardly is

Ave Maria over when the night comes.

I seldom hear the bells pealing Ave Maria without remembering those

verses of Dante, in which he refers to the softened mood that descends

with the fall of evening on the traveller by sea or land:--

"It was the hour that wakes regret anew

In men at sea, and melts the heart to tears,

The day whereon they bade sweet friends adieu,

And thrills the youthful pilgrim on his way

With thoughts of love, if from afar he hears

The vesper bell, that mourns the dying day."

A single cypress stands yonder on the hill, kindled by the red glow of

evening, like an altar taper. It is a tree that suits the hour and the

mood--an Ave Maria tree, monumental as an obelisk, dark and mournful.

Those avenues of cypresses leading to the cloisters and burying-grounds

in Italy are very beautiful. We have the weeping-willow. Both are

genuine churchyard trees, yet each in a way of its own. The willow

with its drooping branches points downwards to the tomb, the cypress

rises straight upwards, and points from the grave to heaven. The one

expresses inconsolable grief, the other believing hope. The symbolism

of trees is a significant indication of the unity of man and nature,

which he constantly draws into the sphere of his emotions, to share in

them, or to interpret them. The fir, the laurel, the oak, the olive,

the palm, have all their higher meaning, and are poetical language.

I saw few cypresses in Corsica, and these of no great size; and yet

such a tree would be in its place in this Island of Death. But the tree

of peace grows here on every hand; the war-goddess Minerva, to whom the

olive is sacred, is also the goddess of peace.

I had fifteen miles to walk from Morosaglia, all the way through wild,

silent hills, the towering summits of Niolo constantly in view, the

snow-capped Cinto, Artiga, and Monte Rotondo, the last named nine

thousand feet in height, and the highest hill in Corsica. It stood

bathed in a glowing violet, and its snow-fields gleamed rosy red.

I had already been on its summit, and recognised distinctly, to my

great delight, the extreme pinnacle of rock on which I had stood with

a goatherd. When the moon rose above the mountains, the picture was

touched with a beauty as of enchantment.

Onwards through the moonlight and the breathless silence of the

mountain wilds; not a sound to be heard, except sometimes the tinkling

of a brook; the rocks glittering where they catch the moonlight

like wrought silver; nowhere a village, nor a human soul. I went at

hap-hazard in the direction where I saw far below in the valley the

mists rising from the Golo. Yet it appeared to me that I had taken a

wrong road, and I was on the point of crossing through a ravine to the

other side, when I met some muleteers, who told me that I had taken not

only the right but very shortest road to my destination.

At length I reached the Golo. The river flows through a wide valley;

the air is full of fever, and is shunned. It is the atmosphere of

a battle-field--of the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo. I was warned in

Morosaglia against passing through the night-mists of the Golo, or

staying long in Ponte alla Leccia. Those who wander much there are apt

to hear the ghosts beating the death-drum, or calling their names; they

are sure at least to catch fever, and see visions. I believe I had a

slight touch of the last affection, for I saw the whole battle of the

Golo before me, the frightful monk, Clemens Paoli in the thickest of

it, with his great fiery eyes and bushy eyebrows, his rosary in the one

hand, and his firelock in the other, crying mercy on the soul of him he

was about to shoot. Wild flight--wounded--dying!

"The Corsicans," says Peter Cyrnæus, "are men who are ready to die."

The following is a characteristic trait:--A Frenchman came upon a

Corsican who had received his death-wound, and lay waiting for death

without complaint. "What do you do," he asked, "when you are wounded,

without physicians, without hospitals?" "We die!" said the Corsican,

with the laconism of a Spartan. A people of such manly breadth and

force of character as the Corsicans, is really scarcely honoured by

comparison with the ancient heroic nations. Yet Lacedæmon is constantly

present to me here. If it is allowable to say that the spirit of the

Hellenes lives again in the wonderfully-gifted people of Italy, this

is mainly true, in my opinion, as applied to the two countries--and

they are neighbours of each other--of Tuscany and Corsica. The former

exhibits all the ideal opulence of the Ionic genius; and while her

poets, from Dante and Petrarch to the time of Ariosto, sang in her

melodious language, and her artists, in painting, sculpture, and

architecture, renewed the days of Pericles; while her great historians

rivalled the fame of Thucydides, and the philosophers of her Academy

filled the world with Platonic ideas, here in Corsica the rugged Doric

spirit again revived, and battles of Spartan heroism were fought.

The young Napoleon visited the battle-field of the Golo in the year

1790. He was then twenty-one years old; but he had probably seen it

before when a boy. There is something fearfully suggestive in this:

Napoleon on the first battle-field that his eyes ever lighted on--a

stripling, without career, and without stain of guilt, he who was yet

to crimson a hemisphere--from the ocean to the Volga, and from the Alps

to the wastes of Lybia--with the blood of his battle-fields.

It was a night such as this when the young Napoleon roamed here on

the field of Golo. He sat down by the river, which on that day of

battle, as the people tell, rolled down corpses, and ran red for

four-and-twenty miles to the sea. The feverous mist made his head

heavy, and filled it with dreams. A spirit stood behind him--a red

sword in its hand. The spirit touched him, and sped away, and the soul

of the young Napoleon followed the spirit through the air. They hovered

over a field--a bloody battle was being fought there--a young general

is seen galloping over the corpses of the slain. "Montenotte!" cried

the demon; "and it is thou that fightest this battle!" They flew on.

They hover over a field--a bloody battle is fighting there--a young

general rushes through clouds of smoke, a flag in his hand, over a

bridge. "Lodi!" cried the demon; "and it is thou that fightest this

battle!" On and on, from battle-field to battle-field. They halt above

a stream; ships are burning on it; its waves roll blood and corpses.

"The Pyramids!" cries the demon; "this battle too thou shalt fight!"

And so they continue their flight from one battle-field to another;

and, one after the other, the spirit utters the dread names--"Marengo!

Austerlitz! Eylau! Friedland! Wagram! Smolensk! Borodino! Beresina!

Leipzig!" till he is hovering over the last battle-field, and cries,

with a voice of thunder, "Waterloo! Emperor, thy last battle!--and here

thou shalt fall!"

The young Napoleon sprang to his feet, there on the banks of the Golo,

and he shuddered; he had dreamt a mad and a fearful dream.

Now that whole bloody phantasmagoria was a consequence of the same vile

exhalations of the Golo that were beginning to take effect on myself.

In this wan moonlight, and on this steaming Corsican battle-field,

if anywhere, it must be pardonable to have visions. Above yon black,

primeval, granite hills hangs the red moon--no! it is the moon no

longer, it is a great, pale, bloody, horrid head that hovers over

the island of Corsica, and dumbly gazes down on it--a Medusa-head, a

Vendetta-head, snaky-haired, horrible. He who dares to look on this

head becomes--not stone, but an Orestes seized by madness and the

Furies, so that he shall murder in headlong passion, and then wander

from mountain to mountain, and from cavern to cavern, behind him the

avengers of blood and the sleuthhounds of the law that give him no

moment's peace.

What fantasies! and they will not leave me! But, Heaven be praised!

there is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, and I hear the dogs bark.

In the large desolate room sit some men at a table round a steaming

oil-lamp; they hang their heads on their breasts, and are heavy with

sleep. A priest, in a long black coat, and black hat, is walking to and

fro; I will begin a conversation with the holy man, that he may drive

the vile rout of ghosts and demons out of my head.

But although this priest was a man of unshaken orthodoxy, he could not

exorcise the wicked Golo-spirit, and I arrived in Bastia with the most

violent of headaches. I complained to my hostess of what the sun and

the fog had done to me, and began to believe I should die unlamented on

a foreign shore. The hostess said there was no help unless a wise woman

came and made the _orazion_ over me. However, I declined the _orazion_,

and expressed a wish to sleep. I slept the deepest sleep for one whole

day and a night. When I awoke, the blessed sun stood high and glorious

in the heavens.

[M] _Sic_ in the German, but it seems a pseudonym, or a

mistake.--_Tr._

[N] Green and gold are the Corsican colours.

[O] _Miglien_--here, as in the other passages where he uses

the measurement by miles, the author probably means the old

Roman mile of 1000 paces.

END OF VOL. I.

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