It is in obedience to the precept of Horace that I have begun by
plunging _in media res_. Now that every one is asleep--the beautiful
Colomba, the colonel, and his daughter--I will seize the opportunity
to acquaint my reader with certain details of which he must not be
ignorant, if he desires to follow the further course of this veracious
history. He is already aware that Colonel della Rebbia, Orso’s father,
had been assassinated. Now, in Corsica, people are not murdered, as they
are in France, by the first escaped convict who can devise no better
means of relieving a man of his silver-plate. In Corsica a man is
murdered by his enemies--but the reason he has enemies is often very
difficult to discover. Many families hate each other because it has been
an old-standing habit of theirs to hate each other; but the tradition of
the original cause of their hatred may have completely disappeared.
The family to which Colonel della Rebbia belonged hated several other
families, but that of the Barricini particularly. Some people asserted
that in the sixteenth century a della Rebbia had seduced a lady of the
Barricini family, and had afterward been poniarded by a relative of the
outraged damsel. Others, indeed, told the story in a different fashion,
declaring that it was a della Rebbia who had been seduced, and a
Barricini who had been poniarded. However that may be, there was, to
use the time-honoured expression, “blood between the two houses.”
Nevertheless, and contrary to custom, this murder had not resulted
in others; for the della Rebbia and the Barricini had been equally
persecuted by the Genoese Government, and as the young men had all left
the country, the two families were deprived, during several generations,
of their more energetic representatives. At the close of the last
century, one of the della Rebbias, an officer in the Neapolitan service,
quarrelled, in a gambling hell, with some soldiers, who called him a
Corsican goatherd, and other insulting names. He drew his sword,
but being only one against three, he would have fared very ill if a
stranger, who was playing in the same room, had not exclaimed, “I, too,
am a Corsican,” and come to his rescue. This stranger was one of the
Barricini, who, for that matter, was not acquainted with his countryman.
After mutual explanations, they interchanged courtesies and vowed
eternal friendship. For on the Continent, quite contrary to their
practice in their own island, Corsicans quickly become friends. This
fact was clearly exemplified on the present occasion. As long as della
Rebbia and Barricini remained in Italy they were close friends. Once
they were back in Corsica, they saw each other but very seldom, although
they both lived in the same village; and when they died, it was reported
that they had not spoken to each other for five or six years. Their sons
lived in the same fashion--“on ceremony,” as they say in the island;
one of them Ghilfuccio, Orso’s father, was a soldier; the other Giudice
Barricini, was a lawyer. Having both become heads of families, and being
separated by their professions, they scarcely ever had an opportunity of
seeing or hearing of each other.
One day, however, about the year 1809, Giudice read in a newspaper at
Bastia that Captain Ghilfuccio had just been decorated, and remarked,
before witnesses, that he was not at all surprised, considering that the
family enjoyed the protection of General -----. This remark was reported
at Vienna to Ghilfuccio, who told one of his countrymen that, when he
got back to Corsica, he would find Giudice a very rich man, because he
made more money out of the suits he lost than out of those he won. It
was never known whether he meant this as an insinuation that the lawyer
cheated his clients, or as a mere allusion to the commonplace truth that
a bad cause often brings a lawyer more profit than a good one. However
that may have been, the lawyer Barricini heard of the epigram, and never
forgot it. In 1812 he applied for the post of mayor of his commune,
and had every hope of being appointed, when General ----- wrote to the
prefect, to recommend one of Ghilfuccio’s wife’s relations. The prefect
lost no time in carrying out the general’s wish, and Barricini felt no
doubt that he owed his failure to the intrigues of Ghilfuccio. In 1814,
after the emperor’s fall, the general’s protégé was denounced as a
Bonapartist, and his place was taken by Barricini. He, in his turn, was
dismissed during the Hundred Days, but when the storm had blown over,
he again took possession, with great pomp, of the mayoral seal and the
municipal registers.
From this moment his star shone brighter than ever. Colonel della
Rebbia, now living on half-pay at Pietranera, had to defend himself
against covert and repeated attacks due to the pettifogging malignity of
his enemy. At one time he was summoned to pay for the damage his horse
had done to the mayor’s fences, at another, the latter, under pretence
of repairing the floor of the church, ordered the removal of a broken
flagstone bearing the della Rebbia arms, which covered the grave of
some member of the family. If the village goats ate the colonel’s young
plants, the mayor always protected their owners. The grocer who kept the
post-office at Pietranera, and the old maimed soldier who had been
the village policeman--both of them attached to the della Rebbia
family--were turned adrift, and their places filled by Barricini’s
creatures.
The colonel’s wife died, and her last wish was that she might be buried
in the middle of the little wood in which she had been fond of walking.
Forthwith the mayor declared she should be buried in the village
cemetery, because he had no authority to permit burial in any other
spot. The colonel, in a fury, declared that until the permit came, his
wife would be interred in the spot she had chosen. He had her grave dug
there. The mayor, on his side, had another grave dug in the cemetery,
and sent for the police, that the law, so he declared, might be duly
enforced. On the day of the funeral, the two parties came face to face,
and, for a moment, there was reason to fear a struggle might ensue for
the possession of Signora della Rebbia’s corpse. Some forty well-armed
peasants, mustered by the dead woman’s relatives, forced the priest,
when he issued from the church, to take the road to the wood. On the
other hand, the mayor, at the head of his two sons, his dependents, and
the gendarmes, advanced to oppose their march. When he appeared, and
called on the procession to turn back, he was greeted with howls and
threats. The advantage of numbers was with his opponents, and they
seemed thoroughly determined. At sight of him several guns were loaded,
and one shepherd is even said to have levelled his musket at him, but
the colonel knocked up the barrel, and said, “Let no man fire without
my orders!” The mayor, who, like Panurge, had “a natural fear of blows,”
refused to give battle, and retired, with his escort. Then the funeral
procession started, carefully choosing the longest way, so as to pass
in front of the mayor’s house. As it was filing by, an idiot, who had
joined its ranks, took it into his head to shout, “Vive l’Empereur!”
Two or three voices answered him, and the Rebbianites, growing hotter,
proposed killing one of the mayor’s oxen, which chanced to bar their
way. Fortunately the colonel stopped this act of violence.
It is hardly necessary to mention that an official statement was at once
drawn up, or that the mayor sent the prefect a report, in his sublimest
style, describing the manner in which all laws, human and divine, had
been trodden under foot--how the majesty of himself, the mayor, and of
the priest had been flouted and insulted, and how Colonel della Rebbia
had put himself at the head of a Bonapartist plot, to change the order
of succession to the throne, and to excite peaceful citizens to take
arms against one another--crimes provided against by Articles 86 and 91
of the Penal Code.
The exaggerated tone of this complaint diminished its effect. The
colonel wrote to the prefect and to the public prosecutor. One of his
wife’s kinsmen was related to one of the deputies of the island, another
was cousin to the president of the Royal Court. Thanks to this interest,
the plot faded out of sight, Signora della Rebbia was left quiet in the
wood, and the idiot alone was sentenced to a fortnight’s imprisonment.
Lawyer Barricini, dissatisfied with the result of this affair, turned
his batteries in a different direction. He dug out some old claim,
whereby he undertook to contest the colonel’s ownership of a certain
water-course which turned a mill-wheel. A lawsuit began and dragged
slowly along. At the end of twelve months, the court was about to give
its decision, and according to all appearances in favour of the colonel,
when Barricini placed in the hands of the public prosecutor a letter,
signed by a certain Agostini, a well-known bandit, threatening him, the
mayor, with fire and sword if he did not relinquish his pretensions. It
is well known that in Corsica the protection of these brigands is
much sought after, and that, to oblige their friends, they frequently
intervene in private quarrels. The mayor was deriving considerable
advantage from this letter, when the business was further complicated by
a fresh incident. Agostini, the bandit, wrote to the public prosecutor,
to complain that his handwriting had been counterfeited, and his
character aspersed, by some one who desired to represent him as a man
who made a traffic of his influence. “If I can discover the forger,” he
said at the end of his letter, “I will make a striking example of him.”
It was quite clear that Agostini did not write the threatening letter
to the mayor. The della Rebbia accused the Barricini of it and _vice
versa_. Both parties broke into open threats, and the authorities did
not know where to find the culprit.
In the midst of all this Colonel Ghilfuccio was murdered. Here are
the facts, as they were elicited at the official inquiry. On the 2d of
August, 18--, toward nightfall, a woman named Maddalena Pietri, who was
carrying corn to Pietranera, heard two shots fired, very close together,
the reports, as it seemed to her, coming from the deep lane leading to
the village, about a hundred and fifty paces from the spot on which she
stood. Almost immediately afterward she saw a man running, crouching
along a footpath among the vines, and making for the village. The man
stopped for a minute, and turned round, but the distance prevented the
woman Pietri from seeing his features, and besides, he had a vine-leaf
in his mouth, which hid almost the whole of his face. He made a signal
with his head to some comrade, whom the witness could not see, and then
disappeared among the vines.
The woman Pietri dropped her burden, ran up the path, and found Colonel
della Rebbia, bathed in his own blood from two bullet wounds, but still
breathing. Close beside him lay his gun, loaded and cocked, as if he had
been defending himself against a person who had attacked him in front,
just when another had struck him from behind. Although the rattle was
in his throat, he struggled against the grip of death, but he could not
utter a word--this the doctors explained by the nature of the wounds,
which had cut through his lungs: the blood was choking him, it flowed
slowly, like red froth. In vain did the woman lift him up, and ask him
several questions. She saw plainly enough that he desired to speak, but
he could not make himself understood. Noticing that he was trying to get
his hand to his pocket, she quickly drew out of it a little note-book,
which she opened and gave to him.
The wounded man took the pencil out of the note-book and tried to
write. In fact, the witness saw him form several letters, but with great
difficulty. As she could not read, however, she was unable to understand
their meaning. Exhausted by the effort, the colonel left the note-book
in the woman’s hand, which he squeezed tightly, looking at her
strangely, as if he wanted to say (these are the witness’s own words):
“It is important--it is my murderer’s name!”
Maddalena Pietri was going up to the village, when she met Barricini,
the mayor, with his son Vincentello. It was then almost dark. She told
them what she had seen. The mayor took the note-book, hurried up to his
house, put on his sash, and fetched his secretary and the gendarmes.
Left alone with young Vincentello, Maddalena Pietri suggested that he
should go to the colonel’s assistance, in case he was still alive, but
Vincentello replied that if he were to go near a man who had been the
bitter enemy of his family, he would certainly be accused of having
killed him. A very short time afterward the mayor arrived, found the
colonel dead, had the corpse carried away, and drew up his report.
In spite of the agitation so natural on such an occasion, Monsieur
Barricini had hastened to place the colonel’s note-book under seal, and
to make all the inquiries in his power, but none of them resulted in any
discovery of importance.
When the examining magistrate arrived the note-book was opened, and on
a blood-stained page were seen letters written in a trembling hand, but
still quite legible; the sheet bore the word _Agosti_--and the judge
did not doubt that the colonel had intended to point out Agostini as his
murderer. Nevertheless, Colomba della Rebbia, who had been summoned by
the magistrate, asked leave to examine the note-book. After turning the
leaves for a few moments, she stretched out her hand toward the mayor
and cried, “There stands the murderer!” Then with a precision and a
clearness which were astonishing, considering the passion of sorrow
that shook her, she related that, a few days previously, her father had
received a letter from his son, which he had burned, but that before
doing so he had written Orso’s address (he had just changed his
garrison) in the note-book with his pencil. Now, his address was no
longer in the note-book, and Colomba concluded that the mayor had torn
out the leaf on which it was written, which probably was that on which
her father had traced the murderer’s name, and for that name the mayor,
according to Colomba, had substituted Agostini’s. The magistrate, in
fact, noticed that one sheet was missing from the quire on which the
name was written, but he remarked also that leaves were likewise missing
from other quires in the same note-book, and certain witnesses testified
that the colonel had a habit of tearing out pages when he wanted to
light a cigar--therefore nothing was more probable than that, by an
oversight, he had burned the address he had copied. Further, it was
shown that the mayor could not have read the note-book on receiving it
from Maddalena Pietri, on account of the darkness, and it was proved
that he had not stopped an instant before he went into his house, that
the sergeant of the gendarmes had gone there with him, and had seen him
light a lamp and put the note-book into an envelope which he had sealed
before his eyes.
When this officer had concluded his deposition, Colomba,
half-distracted, cast herself at his feet, and besought him, by all he
held most sacred, to say whether he had not left the mayor alone for a
single moment. After a certain amount of hesitation, the man, who was
evidently affected by the young girl’s excitement, admitted that he had
gone into the next room to fetch a sheet of foolscap, but that he had
not been away a minute, and that the mayor had talked to him all the
time he was groping for the paper in a drawer. Moreover, he deposed that
when he came back the blood-stained note-book was still on the table, in
the very place where the mayor had thrown it when he first came in.
Monsieur Barricini gave his evidence with the utmost coolness. He made
allowances, he said, for Mademoiselle della Rebbia’s excitement, and was
ready to condescend to justify himself. He proved that he had spent his
whole evening in the village, that his son Vincentello had been with him
in front of the house at the moment when the crime was committed, and
that his son Orlanduccio, who had had an attack of fever that very day,
had never left his bed. He produced every gun in his house, and not one
of them had been recently discharged. He added, that, as regarded the
note-book, he had at once realized its importance; that he had sealed it
up, and placed it in the hands of his deputy, foreseeing that he himself
might be suspected, on account of his quarrel with the colonel. Finally,
he reminded the court that Agostini had threatened to kill the man who
had written a letter in his name, and he insinuated that this ruffian
had probably suspected the colonel, and murdered him. Such a vengeance,
for a similar reason, is by no means unprecedented in the history of
brigandage.
Five days after Colonel della Rebbia’s death, Agostini was surprised by
a detachment of riflemen, and killed, fighting desperately to the last.
On his person was found a letter from Colomba, beseeching him to declare
whether he was guilty of the murder imputed to him, or not. As the
bandit had sent no answer, it was pretty generally concluded that he had
not the courage to tell a daughter he had murdered her father. Yet those
who claimed to know Agostini’s nature thoroughly, whispered that if
he had killed the colonel, he would have boasted of the deed. Another
bandit, known by the name of Brandolaccio, sent Colomba a declaration
in which he bore witness “on his honour” to his comrade’s innocence--but
the only proof he put forward was that Agostini had never told him that
he suspected the colonel.
The upshot was that the Barricini suffered no inconvenience, the
examining magistrate was loud in his praise of the mayor, and the mayor,
on his side, crowned his handsome behaviour by relinquishing all his
claims over the stream, concerning which he had brought the lawsuit
against Colonel della Rebbia.
According to the custom of her country, Colomba improvised a _ballata_
in presence of her father’s corpse, and before his assembled friends. In
it she poured out all her hatred against the Barricini, formally charged
them with the murder, and threatened them with her brother’s vengeance.
It was this same _ballata_, which had grown very popular, that the
sailor had sung before Miss Lydia. When Orso, who was in the north of
France, heard of his father’s death, he applied for leave, but failed to
obtain it. A letter from his sister led him to believe at first in the
guilt of the Barricini, but he soon received copies of all the documents
connected with the inquiry and a private letter from the judge, which
almost convinced him that the bandit Agostini was the only culprit.
Every three months Colomba had written to him, reiterating her
suspicions, which she called her “proofs.” In spite of himself, these
accusations made his Corsican blood boil, and sometimes he was very near
sharing his sister’s prejudices. Nevertheless, every time he wrote to
her he repeated his conviction that her allegations possessed no solid
foundation, and were quite unworthy of belief. He even forbade her, but
always vainly, to mention them to him again.
Thus two years went by. At the end of that time Orso was placed on
half-pay, and then it occurred to him to go back to his own country--not
at all for the purpose of taking vengeance on people whom he believed
innocent, but to arrange a marriage for his sister, and the sale of his
own small property--if its value should prove sufficient to enable him
to live on the Continent.