CHAPTER I.

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Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have

been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

The following words may be variant spellings for the same word, or

different words with similar (correct) spellings.

Speloncato and Speloncata

Sagone and Sagona

Buttafuoco and Buttafucco

Rakotzy and Ragotzy

Capraja and Caprara

On page 129. "Signor Lucgi Biadelli" is a possible typo.

On page 202. "Franceso" is a possible typo.

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WANDERINGS IN CORSICA:

ITS HISTORY AND ITS HEROES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF

FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS

BY ALEXANDER MUIR.

VOL. II.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.

MDCCCLV.

CONTENTS.

WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.—BOOK VI.

PAGE

CHAP. I.—To Isola Rossa through Nebbio, 1

II.—Strand-Idyl of Isola Rossa, 7

III.—Vittoria Malaspina, 12

IV.—From Isola Rossa to Calvi, 20

V.—Calvi and its Men, 24

VI.—A Musical Festival, 31

VII.—The Corsican Dirges, 34

BOOK VII.

CHAP. I.—To Corte through Balagna, 58

II.—The City of Corte, 64

III.—Among the Goat-herds of Monte Rotondo, 73

IV.—The Mountain-top, 85

V.—Vendetta or not? 92

VI.—From Corte to Ajaccio, 95

BOOK VIII.

CHAP. I.—Ajaccio, 100

II.—The Casa Bonaparte, 108

III.—The Bonaparte Family, 113

IV.—The Boy Napoleon, 120

V.—Napoleon as Zealous Democrat, 130

VI.—Napoleon's Latest Activity in Corsica, 148

VII.—Two Coffins, 162

VIII.—Pozzo di Borgo, 165

IX.—Environs of Ajaccio, 173

BOOK IX.

CHAP. I.—From Ajaccio to the Valley of Ornano, 181

II.—From Ornano to Sartene, 188

III.—The Town of Sartene, 192

IV.—Two Stories of the Vendetta—Orso Paolo and

Dezio Dezii, 197

V.—The Environs of Sartene, 208

VI.—The Town of Bonifazio, 211

VII.—The Siege of Bonifazio by Alfonso of

Arragon, 218

VIII.—Other Reminiscences of Bonifazio, and a

Festival, 227

IX.—The Strait, 235

X.—The Caves of Bonifazio, 241

BOOK X.

CHAP. I.—The East Coast, 248

II.—Sulla's Colony, 253

III.—Theodore von Neuhoff, 258

IV.—Theodore the First, by the Grace of God and

through the Holy Trinity, King of Corsica

by Election, 272

V.—Mariana, and Return to Bastia, 284

WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.—TO ISOLA ROSSA THROUGH NEBBIO.

Crossing from Bastia the hills which form the continuation of the Serra

of Cape Corso, you reach the district of Nebbio, on the other side of

the island. The excellent road first ascends Monte Bello for about

a league. To the left, you look down upon the plain of Biguglia and

Furiani, and the large inlet into which the river Bevinco flows. On

gaining the ridge, the sea becomes visible on both sides. The road now

descends towards the western shore—the eastern has vanished, and the

enchanting panorama of the Gulf of San Fiorenzo suddenly unfolds itself

to the eye. A shore of low, reddish rocks, almost without vegetation,

and singularly zigzagged, encircles the deep blue basin. The sight is

grand, strange, and southern.

On the declivity of the mountain stands the gloomy village of

Barbiguano; the road passes it through groves of chestnuts and olives.

This road was made by Count Marbœuf, and it was here that Bernadotte

worked among the other labourers. The _conducteur_ of the Diligence

pointed out to me that its vast curves describe an _M_.

We were now approaching the beautiful Gulf of San Fiorenzo, which lay

within its silent, monotonous, red margin, smiling the "unnumbered

smile" that Æschylus speaks of, from the countless waves and wavelets

that crisped its lustrous surface. And from a valley watered by

a winding brook smiled gaily back to it thousands on thousands of

laurel-roses or oleanders, whose red blossoms clothed its slopes far

and wide. In our northern homes the brook is glad when it can clothe

its margin with alder and willow; here, in the beautiful south, it decks

itself with the gorgeous oleander.

The region is almost entirely uncultivated. I saw frequently, here

and there, forsaken or half-ruined houses, picturesque objects in the

landscape, for they were covered over and over with ivy, whose festoons

obscured the very doors and windows. In such little ivy houses must the

elves dwell, and titter, and twinkle their roguish eyes when a sunbeam

or the moonlight steals in through the lattice of creepers to see what

knavery the little wights are about. The history of those who once

lived there was perhaps bloody and cruel; the Barbary Corsairs may have

expelled them, or the murderous wars with Genoa, or the Vendetta.

Old Genoese towers are seen at intervals along the coast.

The country becomes more and more picturesque in the neighbourhood of

San Fiorenzo. To the right stretched now the full expanse of the gulf—to

the left, sweeping round it in a wide semicircle, towered far in the

background the amphitheatre of the hills. They are the proud hills of

Col di Tenda, at the foot of which the Romans were once defeated by

the Corsicans. They encircle the little province of Nebbio—the district

around the Gulf of San Fiorenzo, towards which alone the amphitheatre

of mountains opens. It is a hilly province of great aridity, but rich

in wine, in fruit, in olives, and chestnuts. Since the earliest times,

Nebbio has been considered as a natural stronghold, and all invaders

of the island, from the Romans to the French, have sought to force an

entrance, and to effect a firm footing at this point—a circumstance

which has made it the theatre of innumerable conflicts.

Nebbio, as at present divided, contains four cantons or pieves—San

Fiorenzo, Oletta, Murato, and Santo Pietro di Tenda. San Fiorenzo is

the principal place.

We reached the little town, which consists of but few houses, and

has only five hundred and eighty inhabitants, at mid-day. It has a

magnificent situation on one of the finest gulfs of Corsica. The only

large valley of Nebbio—the valley of Aliso—traversed by a stream of

the same name, lies before the town. The Aliso flows lazily through a

marsh that poisons the whole region with malaria. On its margin stood

a solitary fan-palm, giving, in the sultry glare of noon, a tropical

character to the whole landscape. Some women and children lay idling

round a cistern, their metal water-pitchers beside them—a group that

harmonized admirably with the palm. The Corsican strand on the gulfs

is, throughout, idyllic; its pictures have a half Homeric, half Old

Testament character.

In a quarter of an hour I had walked over the town. A little fort,

which, with its cupola-crowned tower, looks more like a Turkish mosque

than a castle, protects the harbour, in which a few fishing-boats lay at

anchor. The situation of San Fiorenzo is so singularly advantageous—the

gulf, one of the finest in the Mediterranean, holds out such tempting

commercial facilities, that one cannot but be astonished at the

prevailing desolation. Napoleon, in Antommarchi's memoirs, mentions the

place in these terms: "San Fiorenzo has one of the finest situations I

have ever seen. It lies most favourably for commerce; it touches France,

borders on Italy; its landing-places are safe and convenient; its roads

can accommodate large fleets. I should have built there a large and

beautiful city, which would have become a metropolis."

According to Ptolemy, the old city of Cersunum must have stood in the

neighbourhood of the gulf. The considerable town of Nebbio lay here in

the Middle Ages, and its ruins are still visible half a mile from the

present San Fiorenzo. On an eminence rises still the old Cathedral of

the Bishops of Nebbio, very much dilapidated, but still imposing. It

exhibits the style of the Pisan Basilica, and was probably built in the

eleventh or twelfth century. The church was dedicated to Santa Maria

dell' Assunta. Beside it stand the ruins of the bishop's residence. The

bishops who lived here were no less warlike than the most turbulent of

the Corsican seigniors. They gave themselves the title of Counts of

Nebbio, and it is related that they appeared in the popular assembly

of the Terra del Commune with their swords by their side; and that

when they read mass, they had always a pair of loaded pistols lying on

the altar. The city fell into decay like Accia and Sagone, two other

considerable cities and bishoprics of Corsica. At the present day many

Roman coins are found in that quarter, and many urns have been dug out

of Roman tombs there.

The more modern town of San Fiorenzo was one of the first places which

gave its adherence to the Bank of Genoa, in consequence of which the

city enjoyed many rights and privileges. The Bank sent over a Castellano

and a Podestà yearly, who conducted affairs along with four consuls. In

later wars, the Castle of San Fiorenzo was frequently of importance.

The fresh-caught fish with which our table was here supplied, were

excellent. Scarcely had we despatched them when we resumed our journey.

The road now for some distance leaves the shore, and ascends a range of

hills which sometimes shut out the view of the sea. This coast country

continues mountainous and barren into the province of Balagna, and as

far as Isola Rossa. The Plutonic forces have scattered large fragments

of rock on every side. They cover the declivities in gigantic blocks

or shattered into debris; slate, limestone, granite, are everywhere

visible.

The olive and the chestnut are no longer so abundant; but the wild

olive-shrub (oleastro) covers the hills, with the arbutus, rosemary,

myrtle, and erica. All this shrubbery had suffered from the sun; the

reddish brown tinge of the twigs, the gray of the olive-bushes, and

the weather-worn stones, gave the region, as far as the eye reached, a

melancholy tone. The glimmering of the heated air is the only motion in

this desert stillness; not a bird sings, only the grasshopper chirps.

Sometimes you see a flock of black goats lying under an olive-tree, or

scouring over the rocks, seized with the panic-terror.

From time to time we passed little lonely wayside taverns, where the

mules of the _diligenza_ were changed, or we stopped where a spring

filled a stone trough, at which man and beast were equally glad to slake

their thirst.

I saw in some places little fields of grain—barley and rye. The grain

had been already cut down, and was being threshed upon the field. The

arrangement for this is very simple. In the middle of the field is a

little round threshing-floor, built of stone, and upon this the Corsican

throws down his sheaves, and has them trodden out by oxen, which drag

a heavy stone behind them. I observed that, contrary to the scriptural

injunction, the ox was always muzzled. Innumerable threshing-floors of

this description were scattered over the fields, yet no village was

in sight. Near the threshing-floors stood little barns, four square

erections of stone, with flat roofs. The circular threshing-floors, and

these little gray houses, dotting the fields far and wide, had a most

singular appearance; they seemed the dwellings of gnomes. The Corsican

laughs when you tell him how the husbandman of the north swings the

flail with his own arms; such galley-slave toil he would submit to at

no price.

During the whole journey I saw no wheeled vehicle but our own. Now and

again a Corsican met us on horseback; his double-barrel slung behind

him, and his parasol over his head.

At length, after crossing the little river Ostriconi, we again

approached the shore. The coast has frequently only an elevation of a

hundred feet; then it again shoots upwards in the steepest and rudest

forms. The mountains grow more and more imposing as you approach Isola

Rossa. They are the romantic summits of Balagna—the Promised Land of

the Corsicans, for it literally flows with honey and oil. Some of the

mountains wore snow-caps, and glittered with crystalline splendour.

Yonder lies Isola Rossa before us on the strand! yonder the two gray

towers of the Pisans! yonder the blood-red islet-cliffs that give the

town its name! What an exquisite little idyl of the sea-shore and the

sunset! Silent mountains bending over a silent sea, gray olives holding

out to the pilgrim their branches of peace, a hospitable smoke ascending

from the hearths—verily, I swear that I am come to the enchanted shore

of the Lotus-eaters.

CHAPTER II.

STRAND-IDYL OF ISOLA ROSSA.

——"Of which fruit what man soe'er

Once tasted, no desire felt he to come

With tidings back, or seek his country more.

But rather wish'd to feed on lotus still

With the Lotophagi, and to renounce

All thoughts of home."—_Odyssey._

A large rural esplanade lies at the entrance of the little town,

enclosed however within its walls, which look like the walls of gardens.

In the centre of the esplanade rises a square fountain of granite,

surmounted by a marble bust of Paoli. It had been placed there two

months previously. Paoli is the founder of Isola Rossa. He founded it

in the year 1758, when the war with the Genoese was at its hottest, and

the Republic was in possession of the neighbouring fortified town of

Algajola. He said at the time: "I have erected the gallows on which I

shall hang Algajola." The Genoese came with their gun-boats to hinder

the operations, but the new town rose under their hail of balls; and

Isola Rossa has now 1860 inhabitants, and is important as the emporium

and principal seaport of the oil-abounding Balagna.

I found some children playing round the fountain; among them, a

beautiful boy of six, with the darkest curling hair, and large, dark,

impressive eyes. The child was lovely as an angel. "Do you know,

children," I asked, "who that man is there on the fountain?" "Yes, we

know," said they, "it is Pasquale Paoli." The children asked me what

country I came from; and when I told them to guess, they guessed all the

countries, and at last Egypt, but they knew nothing of Germany. Since

then, they follow me wherever I go; I cannot get rid of them. They sing

me songs, and bring me coral-dust, and painted shells from the shore.

I find them everywhere; and they bring their companions to see me,

so that, like the Piper of Hameln,[A] I draw crowds of children after

me, and they accompany me even into the sea. Earth-shaking Neptune is

friendly, and the blue-footed Nereids approve, and the dolphins play

close by, among the crystal waves.

This is a place where one may well be a child among children. The sense

of remoteness and seclusion one has here, on the shore and in the woods,

soothes and strengthens. The little town lies still as a dream. The

little flat-roofed houses with their green jalousies, the two snow-white

towers of the little church—everything has a miniature look, and an air

of privacy and retirement. In the sea stand the three red cliffs; an

ancient tower keeps watch over them, and tells in the silent evening old

stories of the Saracens; swifts and blue wild pigeons circle round it. I

ascended these rocks in the evening; they are connected with the land by

a dike. A grotto difficult of access, and open to the sea, penetrates on

one side the rugged cliff. Not far off a new mole is being built; French

workmen were occupied in elevating huge cubical masses of cemented stone

by machinery, and then launching them into the waves.

The evening landscape is very beautiful, from the Red Islands. To

the right, the sea and the whole peninsula of Cape Corso veiled in

haze; to the left, running out into the gulf, a red tongue of land;

in the foreground the little city, fishing-skiffs, and one or two

sailing-vessels in the harbour. In the background three glorious

hills—Monte di Santa Angiola, Santa Susanna, and the rugged Monte

Feliceto; on their slopes olive-groves and numerous black villages. Here

and there glow the fires of the goat-herds.

Nowhere can people lead a more patriarchal and peaceable life than do

the inhabitants of Isola Rossa. The land yields its produce, and the sea

too. They have enough. In the evening they sit and gossip on the mole,

or they angle in the still water, or wander in the olive-groves and

orange-gardens. Through the day the fisherman prepares his nets, and the

handicraftsman sits plying his work under the mulberry-tree before his

door. Here should be no lack of song and guitar. I had made myself at

home in a little coffeehouse. The young hostess could sing beautifully;

at my wish a little company assembled in the evening, and I had twanging

of guitars and charming Corsican songs to my heart's content.

The children who followed me sang me songs too, the Marseillaise, the

Girondist's March, and Bertram's Parting, the last with new words in

honour of the President of France, the refrain always closing with _Vive

Louis Napoléon!_ Little Camillo could sing the Marseillaise best.

We looked for shells on the beach. There are as many of them as you

can desire opposite the little nunnery which stands in the garden by

the sea, and in which the Sisters of the Madonna alle Grazie live. The

Madonna-Sisters have an enchanting view of sea and hill from their

villa; and perhaps some of them have dreams of their lost romance

of life and love, when the golden sickle of the moon is shining so

beautifully above Monte Reparata as it is now. The strand is, as far

as you can see, snow-white, broidered with coral-dust and the most

exquisite shells. Little Camillo was indefatigable in picking up what he

thought would please me. He was fondest, however, of the little living

_leppere_—mussels which suck themselves fast to stones. These he brought

out of the water, and forthwith consumed with great gusto, wondering

that I would not share his feast. In the evening we bathed together,

and swam through the phosphorescent waves amid a million sparks.

Beautiful child-world! It is good sometimes when its voices begin again

to speak. The people of Isola Rossa will not let me leave them. They

have taken it into their heads that I am a rich baron, and propose that

I should buy an estate beside them. To lose one's-self here might be

worth while.

"Yes, the Vendetta is our ruin!" said a citizen of the Red Islands

to me. "Do you see the little mercato, our market-hall yonder, with

its white pillars? Last year a citizen was walking up and down there;

suddenly a shot was fired, and the man fell dead! In broad daylight

Massoni had come into the town, had put a bullet into the breast of his

foe yonder in the mercato, and away he was again into the hills; and

that all in broad daylight!"

There is the house where Paoli was surprised, when the famous Dumouriez

made his plot to capture him. And here landed, for the last time,

Theodore von Neuhoff, King of the Corsicans, only to put out again to

sea—for he had dreamed his dream of royalty to an end.

I went one day with an Alsatian of the tenth regiment, which is at

present distributed over Corsica, to Monte Santa Reparata, and the paese

of the same name. It is difficult to paint in words the picture of such

a Corsican village among the hills. The reader will come nearest to it

if he imagines rows of blackish towers, divided longitudinally so as

properly to be only half towers, and furnished with windows, doors, and

loop-holes. The houses are constructed of granite stones, often totally

undressed, generally only covered with a coating of clay, from which

sometimes plants grow. Very narrow and steep stairs of stone lead up

to the door. The mountain Corsicans probably inhabited the same sort

of dwellings in the times of the Etruscans and Carthaginians. I found

everywhere poverty and a want of cleanliness; swine housing with the

human inmates in cavernous little rooms, into which the light fell

through the door. These poor people live high up on the mountains, in an

ocean of air and light, and yet their abodes are those of troglodytes.

I saw a pale young woman issue from one of these dens with a child in

her arms, and asked her if she had ever felt herself well, since she

lived constantly in the dark. She stared at me, and laughed.

In another house, I found a mother putting her three children to bed.

All three stood naked on the clay floor, and looked sickly and wasted.

The beds on which the poor things slept were very wretched little nests.

These stout-hearted mountaineers are nurtured in poverty and misery.

They are at once huntsmen, herdsmen, and husbandmen. Their sole wealth

is the olive, the oil of which they sell in the towns. But not every

one is rich in olives. Here, therefore, life is rendered miserable, not

by the evils of civilisation, but by those of a primitive condition on

which no advance has been made.

I went into the church, the black façade of which attracted me. The

white spire is new. The steeples of the Corsican churches are not

pointed, but end in a belfry, with a pierced, curving roof. The interior

of the church had a gallery and a great altar, a singularly uncouth

affair of whitened stone, with most extravagant decorations. Above

the altar stood the inscription in Latin: "Holy Reparata, pray for thy

people;" _populus_—it sounds antique and democratic. Some rude attempts

at painting were meant to adorn the walls, and there were niches with

half-projecting columns on each side, their capitals Corinthian, or

entirely fanciful. An interdict lies at present on the Church of the

Holy Reparata, and there is no mass read in it. On the death of their

priest, the people refused to accept of the successor sent by the Bishop

of Ajaccio. They split into two parties, and the feud became bloody.

The interdict which was in consequence laid upon the church, has not

yet settled the dispute.

I passed through the narrow and dirty lanes of the village to the edge

of the valley, from which there is an extensive view of the range of

hills enclosing the Balagna. Many brown villages lie along the circle

of the hills, and many olive-woods. The arid rocks contrast powerfully

with the green of the gardens and groves. The Corsican who guided me

to this point, stuttered, and had erysipelas in his face; I believe

he was half-witted. I made him name to me the villages in the dale of

the Balagna. He told me, in a thick gurgling tone of voice, a great

deal that I only half understood, but I understood very well what he

meant when he pointed to more than one place, and gurgled: _Ammazzato,

ammazzato col colpo di fucile_,—he was showing me the spots among

the rocks where human blood had been shed. I shuddered, and left his

disagreeable company as speedily as possible. I returned through the

paese of Oggilione, descending by narrow shepherds' paths through

olive-groves. Armed Corsicans came riding up on little horses, which

clambered nimbly from rock to rock. Evening fell, and the desolate

Monte Feliceto lay bathed in softest colours; a bell among the hills

tinkled the Ave Maria, and a goat-herd on a slope blew his horn. All

this harmonized beautifully; and by the time I reached Isola Rossa, my

mood was once more idyllic.

The contrasts here are frightfully abrupt—child-life, shepherd-life,

and blood-red murder.

CHAPTER III.

VITTORIA MALASPINA.

"Ed il modo ancor m'offende."—_Francesca di Rimini._

I had become acquainted in Bastia with a gentleman of Balagna, Signor

Mutius Malaspina. He is a descendant of the Tuscan Malaspinas,

who governed Corsica in the eleventh century. Through his wife he

became connected with the Paoli family, for Vittoria Malaspina was a

great-granddaughter of Hyacinth Paoli, and descended from the renowned

Clemens. Her father, Giovanni Pietri, Councillor of State, is one of

the most meritorious public men in Corsica, and universally beloved.

Signor Malaspina had offered me hospitality in his house at Monticello,

a paese in the hills a few miles above Isola Rossa, and I had gladly

consented to be a guest in a house where Pasquale had once lived, and

from which he has dated so many of his letters. Malaspina gave me a

letter to present at his house, which, he said, I should not fail to

find open, even though he himself might not have yet returned.

I had accordingly come to Isola Rossa with the intention of going up

to Monticello, and spending some days there. I learned, however, on

my journey, what I had been totally ignorant of, and what Malaspina

had concealed from me—the fearful misfortune, namely, which, less than

three years previously, had there befallen his family; so that I now

did not know which to be most astonished at, the unparalleled nature of

the catastrophe, or the character of the Corsican, who, notwithstanding

what had happened, offered hospitality to an unknown stranger. I could

no longer prevail upon myself to accept of it in a house where it had

been murdered, but I went up to Monticello, to honour misfortune with

human sympathy.

The house of the Malaspina family lies at the entrance of the paese,

on the plateau of a rock hung with verdure; it is a large old mansion

of the earliest times, stern, strong, and castle-like. Dark cypresses

mourn round its terraces. Even from a distance they announce to the

wanderer the tragedy that was enacted beside them. A neglected little

esplanade lies at the entrance of the house. There is a little chapel

on it encircled by young plane-trees; it covers the family burial-vault.

Passing under the arched doorway of the mansion, I ascended a narrow and

gloomy stone staircase, and looked round for the inhabitants. The house

seemed utterly forsaken and desolate. I walked through large dreary

rooms, which the genius of comfort had deserted. At length I found the

housekeeper, an old lady in mourning, and along with her, a girl eight

years old, the youngest daughter. It cost me a great deal of trouble to

gain any approach to a welcome from the ancient dame, but she gradually

laid aside her distrust.

I put no questions. But the little Felicina asked me of her own accord

to come and see her mother's room, and in her innocence said a great

deal more than enough.

The old Marcantonia sat down beside me, and told me the story; and what

she related I shall faithfully repeat, withholding only the unhappy

man's surname, and the name of his native city.

"In the summer of 1849, a great many Italians fled their country, and

came over to Corsica. There was one among them whom the authorities

were going to send back, but Signor Pietri, who is kind to everybody,

so managed matters that he was allowed to stay, and he took him into his

own house in Isola Rossa. The stranger—his name was Giustiniano, stayed

a month with Signor Pietri down there in Isola Rossa, and as at the

end of that time the Signor had to go to Ajaccio to the council, Signor

Mutius and Signora Vittoria brought Giustiniano up here. He had every

kind of enjoyment with us that he could desire, horses and hunting, a

good table, and plenty of company. The Italian was very pleasant and

very affable, but he was melancholy, because he had to live in a foreign

country. Every one liked the Signora Vittoria, and most of all, the

poor; she was an angel."

"Was she beautiful?"

"She had a delicate complexion, still blacker hair than Felicina,

and wonderfully beautiful hands and feet. She was large and full. The

Italian, instead of finding himself happy in our house, where he enjoyed

the most kind and friendly treatment possible, grew more melancholy

every day. He began to speak little and to eat little, and looked as

pale as death. He wandered about for hours among the hills, and often

sat as if oppressed with some great grief, without saying a word."

"Did he never make any disclosure of his love to the Signora?"

"He once followed her into her room, but she made him instantly quit

it, and told the servant to say nothing of the affair to her master.

Some days before the 20th of December—it is almost three years ago

now—Giustiniano began to look so wretched, that we believed he would

become seriously ill. We talked of his going to Bastia, for the sake

of the change, and he himself had expressed a wish to do so. There

were three days during which he did not eat a morsel. One morning,

when I brought him his coffee as usual, I found his door locked. I came

again after a while, and called him by name. He opened the door. I was

terrified to see how he looked. I asked him, 'Signor, what ails you?'

He laid his hand on my shoulder, as I now lay mine on yours, and said

to me: 'Ah! Marcantonietta, if you knew how sore my heart is!' He did

not say another word. I saw a pistol lying on his table, and powder

in a paper, and bullets. He had made Felicina's elder sister fetch

them for him from the bottega, the evening before. He now said he was

going back to Bastia, to take ship there for another country. He took

farewell of us all, and rode away down towards Isola Rossa. It was the

20th of December. On the morning of that day, the Signora Vittoria had

said to me: 'I had a bad dream last night; I thought my sick _compare_

(godmother, gossip) was dying. I will go and see her to-day, and take a

cordial with me.' For that was her way. She often visited sick people,

and took them wine, oil, or fruits."

Here Marcantonia wept bitterly.

"Signor Malaspina had gone off to Speloncato; I was out, there was

nobody in the house but the sick Madamigella Matilde—she was a relative

of the Signora—the youngest children, and a maid-servant. It was the

afternoon. As I was returning home, I heard a shot. I thought there were

huntsmen in the hills, or that some one was blasting rocks. But soon

after, I heard a second shot, and it seemed to come from the house. I

was trembling in every limb when I entered the house; and, in terrible

anxiety, I asked the girl, where is the Signora? She was trembling too,

and she said: 'Ah, _Dio mio!_ She is up stairs in her room changing her

dress, for she is going to see the sick woman.' Run, I said, and see

after her."

"The girl came rushing down stairs again as pale as a corpse. 'Something

must have happened,' said she, 'for the Signora's door is standing

wide open, and everything in the room is tumbled up and down, and the

stranger's door is locked.' I ran up with the girl, and Felicina and her

sister—it was frightful to see my poor Signora's room—the Italian's door

was fastened. We knocked, we called, at last we tore the door off its

hinges—there, Signor, we saw before us!—but I shall tell you no more."

No, not a word more, Marcantonia! I rose, thrilled and shocked, and went

out. The little Felicina and the housekeeper followed me. They led me

to the little chapel. The child and the old woman kneeled down before

the altar, and prayed. I took a myrtle twig from the altar, and threw

it on the spot beneath which Vittoria lies buried. And sadly I wandered

down towards Isola Rossa.

One can hardly grasp in thought the enormity of such a deed, much less

prevail on one's-self to talk of it. Giustiniano had suddenly returned

after leaving Monticello, and secretly gone up stairs; his room,

and that of Vittoria, were on the same flat, separated by a passage.

Giustiniano rushed in on her, armed with a pistol and a dagger. He

wrestled fearfully with the powerful woman. He threw her on the floor,

he dragged her into his room;—she was already dying, pierced with his

dagger-thrusts. Her beautiful hair was found strewed about the floor,

and the room all disordered with the struggle. Giustiniano threw the

unhappy lady on his bed—he shot her with a pistol through the temples—he

took her rings from her fingers, and put them on his own—then he lay

down by her side, and blew out his brains.

So they were found by old Marcantonia, and poor little Felicina, then

a child of five; weeping, she cried: "That is my mother's blood"—a

fearful sight, a horrid catastrophe, to be impressed for life on a

child's soul. The people of Monticello wanted to tear Giustiniano limb

from limb. Malaspina, who had returned without the least misgiving from

Speloncato, prevented this. The body was interred among the rocks of

Mount Monticello. Vittoria was thirty-six years old, and the mother of

six children. Giustiniano had scarcely reached his twenty-fifth year.

I found Mutius Malaspina a plain and unpretending man, with iron

features and an iron composure. I should have refrained from telling the

tragic story here, were it not that it is already in every one's mouth,

and even published in a little book printed in Bastia, which contains

also sonnets on Vittoria. The memory of Vittoria Malaspina will endure

while the island lasts. When centuries have passed, the melancholy fate

of the noble woman, which I learned from the mouth of a member of the

family in the house itself, will have become a popular tradition. Even

when I was at Monticello, I could see how quickly real events, in the

mouths of the people, began to assume something of the mythical. The

same old housekeeper informed me, that the ghost of poor Vittoria had

appeared to a sick woman in the paese. And soon the report will spread,

too, that her murderer rises nightly from his tomb among the rocks,

pale and restless as when in life, and glides towards the house where

he perpetrated the dreadful deed.

Disposed to take a very gloomy view of human nature, I descended the

hills, musing on the narrow boundary at which love, the noblest of all

passions, becomes a criminal and terrific madness, if it passes it by a

hair's-breadth. How closely in the human soul the divine borders on the

devilish! and how comes it that the same feeling supplies the material

for both? I saw neither the hills nor the serene sea; I cursed all

Corsica, and wished I had never set foot on its bloody soil. Suddenly

the beautiful child Camillo came leaping to my side. The little fellow

had followed me over stock and stone up the hills. He now came towards

me, holding out a handful of bramble-berries that he had plucked, and

with bright friendly eyes asked me to take some. The sight of the

innocent child brought back my good humour. It seemed as if he had

thrown himself in my way, to show me how beautiful and innocent man

leaves the hands of Nature. Camillo ran along by my side, bounding from

stone to stone, till all at once he said: "I am tired; I want to sit

a little." He sat down on a fragment of rock. I thought I had never

seen a more beautiful child. When I said this to his elder brother,

he answered: "Yes, everybody likes Camilluccio; in the procession of

Corpus Domini he was an angel, and had a snow-white robe on, and a

great palm-branch in his hand." I looked with delight upon the boy as he

sat upon the rock, gazing silently from his large eyes, the beautiful

raven curls hanging wild about his face. His little dress was torn;

for his parents were poor. All at once he began unasked to sing the

Marseillaise:—

"Allons enfans de la patrie...

Contre nous de la tyrannie

L'étendard sanglant est levé."

It was strange to hear the Marseillaise from the mouth of so lovely a

child, and to see the grave face with which he sang. But how historical

this bloody song sounds in the mouth of a Corsican boy! As little

Camillo sang—"Tyranny has raised its bloody flag against us!" I thought,

Poor child! Heaven guard you, and grant that you do not fall some day

yet from the bullet of the Vendetta, nor wander as avenger in the hills.

As we approached Isola Rossa, we were alarmed by a red glow, as of

flame, in the little town. I hastened on, believing fire had broken out.

It proved to be a bonfire. The children, girls and boys, had kindled a

huge bonfire on the Paoli Place, had joined hands and were dancing round

about it in a ring, laughing and singing. They sang numberless little

couplets of their own composition, some of which I still remember:—

Amo un presidente, I love a president—

Sta in letto senza dente. He lies in bed, and has no teeth.

Amo un ufficiale, I love an officer—

Sta in letto senza male. He lies in bed, and nothing ails

him.

Amo un pastore, I love a herdsman—

Sta in letto senza amore. He lies in bed, and has nothing to

love.

Amo un cameriere, I love a valet—

Sta in letto senza bere. He lies in bed, and has nothing to

drink.

The youngsters seemed to have an exhaustless store of these little

verses, and kept singing and swinging round the fire as if they would

never stop. The melody was charming, _naïve_, childlike. I was so

pleased with this extemporized child's festival, that in honour of it I

improvised one or two couplets myself, whereupon the little folks burst

into such uproarious shouts of merriment, as made all Isola Rossa ring

again.

On the following day, I drove in a _char-à-banc_ to Calvi. Little

Camillo was standing beside the vehicle as I stepped into it, and said

sorrowfully: _Non me piace che tu ci abbandoni_—I'm not pleased that

you're going to leave us. The wanderer fills his note-book with sketches

of mountain, stream, and town, records deeds honourable and vile, why

not for once preserve the picture of a beautiful child? When long years

have elapsed, the face still returns upon our inward vision, and haunts

the memory like a lovely song.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM ISOLA ROSSA TO CALVI.

My vetturino was not long in informing me that I had the honour of

travelling in an extraordinary vehicle. "For," said he, "in this

same _char-à-banc_ I drove last year the three great bandits—Arrighi,

Massoni, and Xaver. They came up to me as I was driving along, all armed

to the teeth, and ordered me to take them to Calvi. I did so without

saying a word, and after that they let me turn back unharmed. Now they

are all dead."

The road from Isola Rossa to Calvi keeps constantly by the coast. The

ruins of many villages, destroyed by the Saracens, are visible on the

hills. Above Monticello lie the ruins of a castle which belonged to the

famous Giudice della Rocca, the lieutenant of the Pisans. This righteous

judge of his people still lives in the memory of the Corsicans. He

was just, they tell, even towards the brutes. One day he heard an

unusual bleating among the lambs of a flock in the Balagna; he asked

the shepherd what ailed them, and the man confessed that they were

bleating for hunger, as the milk had been taken from their dams. Giudice

thereupon ordered that the sheep should henceforth not be milked till

the lambs were satisfied.

The first town I passed was Algajola, a seaport of considerable

antiquity, but with only two hundred inhabitants. Lying in ruins, as

the bombs of the English left it sixty years ago, it bears mournful and

striking testimony to the present state of Corsica. Even the inhabited

houses resemble black ruins. A friendly old man, whom the wars of

Napoleon had at one time taken as far as Berlin, showed me what was

remarkable in Algajola, pointing out to me a great heap of stones as

the _Palazzo della Communità_. In the time of the Genoese, Algajola

was the central point of the Balagna; and as it was so situated that

the inhabitants of every village in the province could travel to it and

return home the same day, the Genoese fortified it, and raised it to a

residency of one of their lieutenants of the island.

But the most notable thing about the little town is its story of two

faithful lovers, Chiarina and Tamante. The French had condemned Tamante

to death; but his true-love armed herself, and with the aid of her

friends rescued him from execution. The noble deeds that spring from

faithful love are everywhere honoured by the people, and become immortal

in their traditions; the story of Chiarina and Tamante is popular over

the whole of Italy, and I have found it selling as a cheap pamphlet in

the streets of Rome.

On the shore near Algajola there is a quarry of singularly beautiful

blue granite. I saw a pillar there which would do honour to an Indian

or Egyptian temple. It is sixty feet in length, and twelve feet in

diameter. It has been lying for years neglected on the field, exposed

to the injuries of the weather, and noticed at most by the passing

traveller, or the eagle that alights on it. Originally intended for a

monument to Napoleon in Ajaccio, it was never removed from the quarry,

as the necessary sum could not be raised for its transport. It will

probably now be conveyed to Paris. The enormous block which supports

the Vendôme pillar in Paris is also of this same exquisite granite of

Algajola. With what just pride, therefore, may the Corsican stand before

that pillar of Austerlitz, and tell the French: "My country produced

both the great man up yonder, and the glorious granite on which he

stands."

By and bye I reached Lumio, a high-lying village, whose black-brown,

tower-like houses it had been at a distance totally impossible to

distinguish from the rocks. Green jalousies marked here and there the

house of a man of some means. Descendants of the ancient seigniors still

live in all these villages; and men of the proudest names, and endless

pedigree, live in the gloomy paeses of Corsica among the common people,

and mix in their society. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is so much

democratic equality in social life to be found as in this island, where

distinctions of rank are hardly ever visible, and the peasant conducts

himself before the noble with the upright bearing of an independent man,

as I have often myself seen. Above Calvi, in this region, lives Peter

Napoleon, Lucian's son—at the time I was in Corsica the only Bonaparte

resident on the native island of the family. The Balagnese are fond of

him; they say he is a good hunter, associates freely with the shepherds,

and has not forgotten that his forefathers belonged to the Corsicans.

The election of Louis Napoleon of course filled the Corsican people

with pride and exultation. I found the portrait of this man everywhere

throughout the island, and heard his energy praised as Corsican

energy. Men of more insight, however, did not allow their patriotism to

carry them so far; and I heard Corsicans express the opinion that the

Napoleons were tyrants, and the _last_ oppressors of liberty.

Lumio has many orange-orchards, and such an astonishing quantity of

cactus-hedges as I found nowhere else, except at Calvi. The cactus has

here the size and stem of a tree. The view of the valley and gulf of

Calvi from the mountains of Lumio is very beautiful. Calvi lies on a

tongue of land at the foot of the hills of Calenzana. With its dark

flat houses, two cupolas rising high above them, and the walls of the

fort, which stands at the extreme end of the little peninsula, it has

a striking resemblance to a Moorish city.

Calvi is the leading town of the smallest of the arrondissements of

Corsica. This arrondissement contains six cantons, thirty-four communes,

and about 25,000 inhabitants, and extends over almost the entire

north-west of the island, mountains and coast. Not one half of it is

under cultivation, for the whole district of coast from Galeria lies

completely waste. The Balagna alone is well cultivated, and it has also

the larger proportion of the population.

The little city of Calvi, containing at present about 1680 inhabitants,

owes its origin to Giovaninello, lord of Nebbio, the bitter enemy of

Giudice della Rocca, and an adherent of Genoa. The town, therefore,

became subject to Genoa, and it remained constantly true to the

Republic. Like the Bonifazians, the Calvese were allowed important

privileges. In the time of Filippini, Calvi contained four hundred

hearths; and he terms it one of the principal cities of Corsica for

two reasons—its antiquity, and the handsomeness of the houses, as he

adds, "in comparison with those of the interior." The Bank of Genoa,

he says, built the fortress; and, according to some, its erection cost

1850 scudi.

Calvi lies on the tongue of land which terminates one of the ranges of

hills that encircle the extensive basin round the gulf. These hills

are bare, and consist of granite and porphyry. They form an imposing

amphitheatre. Olives and vines thrive on their slopes, and their base

is covered with yew, and shrubbery of myrtle, albatro, and tinus, the

blossoms of which supply the bees with honey. From this arises the

bitterness of the Corsican honey, to which allusion is made by Ovid

and Virgil. Calenzana particularly abounds in honey. A stream flows

through the valley of these hills, and forms in the neighbourhood of

Calvi a marsh, the exhalations of which are dangerous. This marsh has

the name of _La Vigna del Vescovo_—the Bishop's Vineyard—and its origin

is connected with one of those significant popular traditions which so

much amuse the traveller in Corsica.

CHAPTER V.

CALVI AND ITS MEN.

The miasma of the marsh made the Borgo of Calvi—the little

suburb—unhealthy. More salubrious is the air of the fortress above,

which encloses the city proper. I ascended to this old Genoese

citadel—the strongest fortification in Corsica next to Bonifazio. Above

the gate, I read these words—_Civitas Calvis semper fidelis_. Calvi was

unfailingly true to the Genoese. Fidelity is always beautiful when it

is not slavish, and Calvi was in fact a Genoese colony. The proverbial

fidelity of Calvi, as expressed in the motto over its gate, has become

in more than one sense historical. When the republican General,

Casabianca, after the heroic defence of Calvi against the English,

was obliged to capitulate in the year 1794, one of the stipulations of

surrender was, that the old inscription above mentioned should remain

untouched. This condition was honourably fulfilled, as the inscription

itself still testifies.

There is only one point in regard to which Genoa and the "ever-faithful"

Calvi are at feud. For the Calvese affirm that Columbus was a

fellow-countryman of theirs. They say that his family, admittedly

Genoese, had at an early period settled in Calvi. A very earnest contest

was in fact for some time maintained about this question of birth,

as formerly the seven cities disputed about the cradle of Homer. It

is affirmed that Genoa suppressed the family register of the Colombos

of Calvi, and changed the name of one of the streets of the town, the

Colombo Street, into the street _Del Filo_. I find it also recorded that

inhabitants of Calvi were the first Corsicans who sailed to America.

I am informed further, that the name Colombo still exists in Calvi.

Corsican authors even of the present day claim the great discoverer as

their fellow-countryman; and Napoleon, during his residence in Elba,

proposed instituting historical researches in regard to this point.

We shall forbear attempting to settle it; Columbus in his will calls

himself a native Genoese. The world might become envious if it were

established that fate had bestowed upon the little Corsica the man who

was greater even than Napoleon.

Valiant men enough do honour to Calvi; and when we look at this little

town within the fortress, and see that it is nothing but the heap of

black and shattered ruins to which the bombs of the English reduced it,

we read in its chronicle of desolation the history of departed heroes.

Very strange is the aspect of a city, which, shattered by a bombardment

almost a century ago, remains still at the present day in ruins. The

clock of time seems here in Corsica to have stood still. An iron hand

has maintained its grasp upon the past—upon the old popular customs—the

dirges of the Etruscans, the family feuds of the Middle Ages, the

barbarism of the Vendetta, the ancient, simple modes of life, and the

ancient heroism; and as the people live in cities that have become

gray in ruin, they live socially, in a state that, for the cultivated

nations, is hoary tradition.

In the principal church of Calvi, whose Moorish cupola is pierced by

the balls of the English, they show the tomb of a family that bears the

dearest, the most precious of all names—the name Libertà—Freedom! It is

the old heroic family of the Baglioni which has this title. In the year

1400, when certain aristocrats in Calvi had made themselves tyrants of

the town, and were on the point of putting the city into the hands of

the Arragonese, a young man named Baglioni arose, and suddenly, with his

friends, attacked the two tyrants in the citadel, as once Pelopidas fell

upon the tyrants of Thebes, put them to the sword, and called the people

to freedom. From that call—Libertà! Libertà!—came the surname which his

grateful fellow-citizens immediately gave him, and which his family

has ever since borne. The three heroic brothers, Piero, Antonio, and

Bartolommeo Libertà, were descendants of Baglioni. They had emigrated

to Marseilles. This city was in the hands of the League, and, though

left alone, continued to defy Henry IV. after he had entered Paris, and

received the submission of the House of Guise. Casaux, the consul of the

League, was the tyrant of Marseilles; he had determined to surrender

the town to the Spanish fleet, which was commanded by the celebrated

Andreas Doria. Piero Libertà, with his brothers and other bold men of

Marseilles, conspired to rescue the city. Piero collected them in his

house, and, when they had matured their plan, they proceeded daringly

to its instant execution. They burst into the citadel of Marseilles,

and, with his own hand, Piero Libertà sent a lance through the throat of

the consul Casaux. When he had either slain or disarmed all the guards,

he shut the doors of the castle, and, with the bloody sword in his

hand, he ran through the city, shouting, "Libertà! Libertà!" The people

rose at his call, ran to arms, stormed the towers and fortifications

of Marseilles, and freed the city. Immediately the Duke of Guise took

possession of Marseilles in the name of Henry IV., and he dated from the

Camp of Rosny, the 6th March 1596, a memorial eulogizing Piero Libertà.

He made him supreme judge of Marseilles, captain of the Porta Reale,

governor of _Nostra Donna della Guardia_, and heaped upon him other

honours besides. This happened at the same time that another Corsican,

Alfonso Ornano, the son of Sampiero, won Lyons for the King of France,

on which occasion Henry IV. called out: "Now am I king."

Piero Libertà died not many years after the deliverance of Marseilles.

The town buried him in state, and placed his statue in the City

Hall. These words were engraven on the pedestal of the statue: _Petro

Libertæ Libertatis assertori, heroi, malorum averrunco, pacis civiumque

restauratori, &c._

The reproductive power that characterizes the Corsican families is truly

remarkable. Any one who has directed attention to the history of this

nation will have found, that almost universally the abilities of the

father descend to the son and the son's sons.

It is not with a light heart that I now pass from the tomb of the family

of Libertà, to that field of Calenzana, where lie graves of Schiavitù—of

Slavery. They are the graves of five hundred brave Germans, sons of my

fatherland, who were bought and sold, and who fell there at Calenzana.

I have told how it was in the history of the Corsicans. The Emperor

Charles VI. had sold a corps of German auxiliaries to the Genoese,

and the Genoese despatched them to Corsica. On the 2d of February

1732, the Corsicans under their general, Ceccaldi, attacked the German

troops at Calenzana; these latter were commanded by Camillo Doria

and Des Devins. After a fearful struggle the imperial troops were

beaten, and five hundred Germans lay dead on the field of Calenzana.

The Corsicans buried the strangers who had come to fight against the

liberties of their country, on the beautiful mountain-slope between

Calvi and Calenzana. Beneath a foreign soil rest there the bones of my

unhappy countrymen. Rocks of dark, blood-tinged porphyry stand near.

Myrtles and flowering herbs crown the graves. And still every year at

the Festival of All-Souls, the clergy of Calenzana visit these graves

of their foes—_Camposanto dei Tedeschi_, as people call the field of

Calenzana; and sprinkle with consecrated water the ground where the poor

mercenaries fell. Such is the vengeance the Corsican takes upon the foes

who come to assassinate his independence! I feel as if on me—one of the

few Germans who have ever stood upon the graves of the mercenaries of

Calenzana, and probably the only German who has thus made public mention

of them—devolved the duty of thanking, in the name of my country, the

noble Corsican people for their generous sympathy and wide-hearted

humanity.

The Corsicans gave my countrymen a grave; I will write their epitaph:—

We came, five hundred luckless mercenaries,

Sold by the Emperor to Genoa,

To crush the freedom of the Corsicans—

We came, and paid the penalty in blood;

We expiate the crime in foreign graves.

Call us not guilty, give us tender pity,

The foeman's soil a pitying shelter lends.

Despise not, wanderer, children of a time

So dark; ye who now live, wipe off the stain!

Those were in truth dark times when our fathers were sold like a

brutish herd, and sent to Corsica, it might be, or to America. But

Pasquale Paoli arose here—in the other hemisphere Washington; and

beyond the Rhine, the rights of man became clamorous. The reproach of

these old times was wiped away, and with the rest of it, the reproach

of Calenzana; for the children of those who lie here in slavish graves

fought for wife and child and the independence of their country, fought

for European freedom, and vanquished the Corsican despot.

The sun is setting; it throws its splendours on the gulf, and the

rocky hills of Calenzana are all a-glow. How magical is this southern

haze of distance, and how delicate the tones of the colouring! All

transition has a profound effect upon the human soul. On the boundary

line where the transition is made from Being to non-existence, or from

non-existence to Being, lies the fairest and deepest poesy of life. It

is not otherwise in history. Its most wonderful phenomena invariably

occur on the boundary where two different periods of culture touch, and

pass the one into the other; as in Nature, the seasons of the year and

the times of the day exhibit the most glorious phenomena when they are

merging into one another. I believe it is the same with the history of

the individual. Here too, the transitions from one period to another,

from one phase of culture to another, are full of enchantment, and more

fruitful than all other periods, for it is in them alone that the germs

of poetry and productive power are developed.

There is a world-forsaken loneliness about Calvi which is almost

fabulous. No movement on the still mirror of the gulf—no ship on all

those miles of sea—no bird cleaving the air—the black tower rising

yonder on the snow-white strand like a dark shape in a dream. But here

sits an eagle, a magnificent creature, resting with a grave majesty—now

he takes flight, and with mighty strokes of his pinions makes for the

hills. He is satiated with blood.—There I have started a fox, the first

I have met with in Corsica, where these animals attain an astonishing

size, and, like wolves, commit depredations among the sheep. He was

sitting much at his ease upon the shore, apparently enjoying the

rose-red of the waves, and quite lost in the contemplation of nature,

for he was in such a brown study that I got within five paces of him.

Suddenly Master Reynard jumped up, and as the strand was narrow I had

the pleasure of stopping his way, and making him lose his composure

for a minute or two. Hereupon he doubled cunningly, turned the enemy's

flank, and ran merrily away into the hills. He is very well off in

Corsica, where the beasts make him their king, as there are no wolves.

After dark, I stepped into a boat, and rowed about in the gulf. What

a glorious night-picture! The sky of Italy set with sparkling stars—a

magic transparency in the atmosphere—away at the extremity of the

headland a flashing beacon—lights in the castle of Calvi—one or two

sleeping ships on the water—herdsmen's fires on the dark hills above—the

waves phosphorescing round the boat, and the drops sparkling as they

fall from the oars—in the deep stillness the sounds of a mandoline borne

from the shore.

CHAPTER VI.

A MUSICAL FESTIVAL.

The poetry of this evening was not yet exhausted. I had scarcely fallen

asleep in my little locanda, when the twanging of citherns, and the

sounds of voices singing in parts, awakened me. They played and sang

for at least an hour before the house. It was meant for a young girl

who was one of its inmates. They sang first a serenade, then Voceros or

dirges. Singular, that a young girl should be serenaded with dirges; and

the proper serenade itself with which they commenced was as mournful

as a Vocero. It is impossible to tell how overpoweringly touching is

the solemn melancholy of this music in the stillness of the night; the

tones are so wailing, so monotonous, and long drawn out. The first voice

sang solo, then the second joined, and the third, and at last the whole

band. They sang _in recitativo_, as they sing in Italy the ritornello.

In the ritornello too, sentiments not meant to be melancholy are sung

in an almost plaintive strain; but when this in itself melancholy kind

of music is applied to the Vocero, the whole soul is thrilled with

sadness. I had heard night-singing in other parts of Corsica, but none

of such a powerful and solemn character as this; I shall never forget

the dirges of that night in Calvi. Often yet I hear their echo; and one

word particularly, _speranza_, becomes frequently audible to me in the

plaintive tones in which it was sung.

In the morning I wandered accidentally into the shop of an old

shoemaker, who proved to be the cithern-player of the previous night.

At my request he readily brought out his instrument. The Corsican

_cetera_ has sixteen sides; it has almost the form of the mandoline;

but is larger, and has the sounding-board not quite round, but

somewhat flattened. The strings are struck with a little, flat, pointed

ram's-horn. I found here, therefore, the universal experience confirmed,

that shoemakers as a class are thoughtful, musical, and poetical. This

Hans Sachs of Calvi readily got an assemblage of the best singers

together. Shoes and lasts were thrown into a corner, and the little

company collected in a room behind the shop, the window of which looked

out upon the gulf through a profusion of flowers and creeping plants;

the singers drew their seats together, their leader took his cithern,

and opened in rich full tones. But let me mention who the singers

were. There was first of all the old shoemaker as _maestro_; then there

was his young apprentice, who learnt from him music and boot-making;

then a well-dressed young man of the legal profession; and finally a

silver-haired old man of seventy-four. Old as he was, he sang right

heartily, though not perhaps with all the vigour of his youth; as the

notes of the Corsican Voceros are very long, the amiable old fellow

sometimes lost breath.

Now commenced a really beautiful concert. They sang whatever I wanted,

serenades and voceradi or laments, but generally laments, because the

originality and beauty of these charmed me most. One among the many

Voceros was upon the death of a soldier. The story was this. A young

man from the mountains has left his father, mother, and sister, and

gone to serve on the Continent. After many years he returns home an

officer. He ascends to his paese; none of his relations recognise him.

He confides the secret to his sister only, to her unspeakable joy.

He bids his father and mother, to whom he has not made himself known,

prepare for to-morrow a meal as sumptuous as they can—he will pay them

for it. In the evening he takes his gun, and goes out to shoot. He has

left a knapsack heavy with gold in his chamber. His father discovers

this, and determines to murder the stranger that same night. The horrid

deed is consummated. When morning has come, and noon has come, but still

not her brother, his sister inquires after the stranger; in the anguish

of her heart she tells her parents that he is her brother. They rush

into the room, father, mother, and sister, and——there he lies in his

blood! Now follows the Lamento of the sister. The story is true; the

popular ballads of the Corsicans invariably deal with real events. The

shoemaker narrated the circumstances in most dramatic style, and the

silver-haired old man assisted him with the liveliest gestures; then

the first snatched up his cithern, and they sang the lamento.

These friendly minstrels, whom I told that I would translate their songs

into my native tongue, and that I would not forget them and the hours

I had spent with them, entreated me to stay yet this other evening in

Calvi, and they would spend the whole night in singing to me; but if I

was resolved on leaving, then I must go to Zilia, which, they said, had

the best singers in Corsica. "Ah!" said the shoemaker, "the best of them

all is dead. He sang as mellow as any bird, but he went to the hills

and became a bandit, and the country-people protected him long from the

officers, because he sang so beautifully; but they caught him at last,

and he lost his head in Corte."

Thus Calvi became an oasis of song to me in these quiet,

thinly-inhabited regions. I found it interesting, therefore, to remember

that two of the best Corsican poets had been natives of Calvi—Giovanni

Baptista Agnese, a writer of religious poetry born in the year 1611, and

Vincenzo Giubega, who died in the year 1800, at the age of thirty-nine,

as judge in Ajaccio. Giubega is not unjustly termed the Anacreon of

Corsica. I have read some beautiful love-poems and sonnets of his,

characterized by much grace and feeling.

Few of his songs survive; he burned most of them before his death.

As Sophocles says that memory is the queen of things, and because the

muse of poetry herself is a daughter of Mnemosyne, I shall mention here

another once world-renowned Corsican of Calvi—Giulio Giudi, in the year

1581 the wonder of Padua on account of his unfortunate memory. He could

repeat 36,000 names after once hearing them. People called him _Giudi

della gran memoria_. But he produced nothing; his memory had killed

all his creative faculty. Pico von Mirandola, who lived before him,

produced, but he died young. It is with the precious gift of memory as

with all other gifts—they are a curse of the gods, when they give too

much.

I have already mentioned the name of Salvatore Viale. This author, a

native of Bastia, is the most productive poet the island can yet boast

of. One of his works is a comic poem called _La Dinomachia_, in the vein

of the _Secchia Rapita_ of Tassoni; and he has translated Anacreon,

and part of Byron. Byron in Corsica, therefore!—Viale has earned the

gratitude of his country by an unwearied scientific activity, and his

illustrations of the manners and customs of the Corsicans are highly

meritorious. Corsica has also a translator of Horace—Giuseppe Ottaviano

Savelli, a friend of Alfieri, of whom I have already spoken. I could

name many more Corsican poets, as, for example, Biadelli of Bastia, who

died in the year 1822, a writer of songs. But their poems will never

attain more than a Corsican celebrity. The most beautiful poetry of

Corsica is her popular poetry, and Grief is the greatest Corsican poet.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CORSICAN DIRGES.

In order to understand the Corsican dirges, we must consider them in

their relation to the existent usages in connexion with death—usages

which date from a remote antiquity. Among a people with whom death

assumes, more than anywhere else, the character of a destroying

angel, whose bloody form is almost constantly before their eyes, it

is natural to expect that the dead should have a more striking cultus

than elsewhere. There is something mysterious and impressive in the

circumstance, that the finest poetry of the Corsicans is the poetry of

death, and that they hardly ever compose or sing except in the frenzy

of grief. Most of these strange flowers of their popular poetry have

their root in blood.

When a death has occurred, the relatives standing round the bed repeat

the prayers of the rosary; they then raise a loud wail (_grido_). The

corpse is now laid upon a table standing by the wall, called the _tola_.

The head, on which a cap is placed, rests on a pillow. To preserve the

natural appearance of the features, the head is bound with a cloth or

fillet, supporting the chin, and fastened beneath the cap. If it is a

young girl, she lies in a white shroud, and on her head is a wreath of

flowers; if it is a grown-up female, she usually wears a coloured dress;

that of aged women is black. A male corpse lies in a shroud and Phrygian

cap, resembling thus the Etruscan dead, as they may be seen, surrounded

with mourners, in representations contained in the Etrurian Museum of

the Vatican.

The friends watch and wail beside the tola often throughout the whole

night; and fire is always kept burning. But the principal lament

occurs early on the morning of the funeral, when the body is laid in

the coffin, and before the Brothers of Death come to lift the bier.

The friends and relatives come from the neighbouring villages to the

funeral. This assemblage is called the _corteo_, cortege, or procession,

or the _scirrata_—a word which looks like the German _schaar_, though

the origin cannot be accurately ascertained. A woman, always the poetess

of the dirge which she sings, leads a chorus of wailing females. They

say, therefore, in Corsica—_andare alla scirrata_, when the women go

in procession to the house where the dead body lies; if it is the body

of a man who has been killed, they say: _andare alla gridata_—to go

to the wailing, or, more strictly, the howling. When the women of the

chorus enter the house, they greet the widow, mother, or sister of the

dead, as the case may be, keeping head bended towards head for about

half a minute. Then a woman of the family invites the assembled females

to begin the lament. They form a circle, the _cerchio_ or _caracollo_,

about the tola, and move round the dead body howling, breaking the

circle, and again closing it, always with loud lamentation and gestures

of the wildest grief.

This pantomime is not the same in all parts of the country. In some

places it has become altogether obsolete, in others it has a milder

form; among the mountains, far in the interior, particularly in Niolo,

such usages exist in all their old pagan force, and resemble the

death-dances of Sardinia. Their dramatic animation and ecstatic fury

shock and horrify the spectator. They are all women who dance, wail, and

sing. Like Mænads, the hair dishevelled and flying about the breast,

eyes darting fire, their black mantles waving, they sway to and fro

and round the tola, shriek, strike their hands together, beat their

breasts, tear their hair, weep, sob, throw themselves on the bier,

besprinkle themselves with dust; then the lament ceases, and these women

sit silent, like a sisterhood of sibyls, on the floor of the chamber

of death, breathing deeply, and calming themselves. There is a fearful

contrast between this wild death-dance, with its shrieks and howling,

and the corpse lying in the midst of it rigid and still, and yet ruling

all the while the frantic orgies. Among the mountains, the wailers tear

their faces till the blood flows, because, according to ancient heathen

belief, blood is acceptable to the dead, and appeases the shade. This

is called _raspa_ or _scalfitto_.

There is a demoniac wildness about these wailing women, which reaches a

frightful pitch when their dance and lament concern a murdered man. Then

they become the very Furies themselves, the snaky-haired avengers of

murder, as Æschylus has painted them. Their loose hair, howling, singing

revenge, circling in their horrid dance, the effect of their chant on

the murderer who hears it is frequently so overpowering, that, seized

with shuddering horror and agony of conscience, he betrays himself.

I have read of a murderer who, disguised in the cowled capote of the

Brothers of Death, had the hardihood to hold one of the tapers by the

bier of him whom he had helped to assassinate; and who, when he heard

the dirge begin to shriek for vengeance, trembled so violently that

the taper fell from his hand. In criminal trials, affirmations on the

part of witnesses that the accused has been seen to tremble during the

lament, are received as condemnatory proof. Yes! there is many a man in

this island like the Orestes of Æschylus, of whom the prophetess might

say—

"On the navel-stone behold a man

With crime polluted to the altar clinging,

And in his bloody hand he held a sword

Dripping with recent murder;

* * * * *

And, stretch'd before him, an unearthly host

Of strangest women, on the sacred seats

Sleeping—not women, but a Gorgon brood,

And worse than Gorgons, or the ravenous crew

That filched the feast of Phineus (such I've seen

In painted terror); but these are wingless, black,

Incarnate horrors."[B]

The silence of the grave now reigns in the chamber. Nothing is heard

but the deep breathing of those weird women cowering on the floor,

wrapped in their mantles, the head sunk upon the breast, expressing the

deepest grief in the manner customary among the ancient Greeks, whose

artists represent those overwhelmed with sorrow as covering the head

and concealing the face. Nature herself has given the human being only

two ways of indicating extreme suffering—the irrepressible outburst

of feeling in the loud cry in which the whole vital energy seems to

concentrate itself, and the profound silence in which the vital energies

sink into stupor. Suddenly one of the women springs out of the cowering

circle, and, like an inspired seeress, begins the song upon the dead.

She chants it _in recitativo_, strophe after strophe, ending each with a

wo! wo! wo! which the chorus of wailers repeat, as in the Greek tragedy.

The woman who thus sings and leads the chorus, has also composed the

dirge, or has improvised it as she sang. In Sardinia, it is usually the

youngest girl who leads. As a general rule, these songs of revenge or of

eulogy, in which the praise of the dead is mingled with complaint for

his loss, or with calls for vengeance on his murderers, are improvised

on the spot.

How strangely contradictory to the culture of our time the state of

things in a country where we can still witness scenes like these, which

seem separated from our present European civilisation by a gulf of three

thousand years!

Let the reader imagine, then, the corpse upon the tola, the women

crouching round it on the ground; a young girl rises, and, her

countenance flaming with enthusiasm, improvises, like a Miriam or a

Sappho, verses of the most surpassing grace, and full of the boldest

images; exhaustlessly her wrapt soul pours forth the rhythmic stream of

dithyrambs, which express melodiously all that is deepest and highest

in human sorrow. The chorus wails at the close of each strophe, Deh!

deh! deh! I know not whether anywhere in the world a picture could be

found, which combines the repulsive with the beautiful in a manner so

profoundly poetical and significant as such a scene, where a maiden

sings before a bier what her pure young soul has that moment been

inspired with, while a chorus of Furies howl the accompaniment; or

where a girl, with flaming eye and glowing cheek, rises like an Erinnys

over her murdered brother who lies armed upon the tola, and imprecates

vengeance in verses whose fierce and bloody language no male lips could

utter more relentlessly. In this country, where the position of woman

is low and menial, it is nevertheless woman that sits in judgment, and

summons the criminal before the tribunal of her plaint. Thus, too, the

chorus of the maid-servants, in the Libation-bearers of Æschylus, sings—

——"Son, the strong-jaw'd funeral fire

Burns not the mind in the smoky pyre;

Sleeps, but not forgets the dead

To show betimes his anger dread.

For the dead the living moan,

That the murderer may be known.

They who mourn for parent slain

Shall not pour the wail in vain.

Bright disclosure shall not lack

Who through darkness hunts the track."[C]

Some of these seeresses, who may be compared to the Germanic Velleda,

become celebrated for their inspired singing; as Mariola delle Piazzole,

a leader of the dirge-choruses, whose improvisations were everywhere

in request; and Clorinda Franceschi of Casinca. In Sardinia, the

women of the chorus are called _Piagnoni_ or _prefiche_; in Corsica,

_vecoratrici_ or _ballatrici_. It is not always a practised leader

of choruses who sings; in many cases it is some relative of the

deceased—the mother, the wife, very frequently the sister. For the

grief-burdened heart relieves itself in plaints that are eloquent

without art, and renders the thoughts poetical, and the language

elevated, even though the improvisatrice may be gifted with no special

poetic talent. Moreover, the dirges have a standing form; and long

before a death occurs, the Corsican woman has familiarized herself with

the popular laments, which pass from mouth to mouth as other songs do

with us. A cast of gloom is thus diffused over the whole life of the

people here. When the Corsicans are sitting together, and begin to sing,

they choose very frequently a Lamento, as if they wished to practise for

that lament which, perhaps, each of them will yet sing in earnest over

the tola of a brother, a husband, or a child.

The pantomimic dance that accompanies the lament is called in Corsica

the _ballata_ (_ballo funebre_); _ballatare sopra un cadavere_, is

to dance over a corpse. The wailing is termed _vocerare_, the dirge

_Vocero_, _Compito_, or _Ballata_. In Sardinia these obsequies are

called _Titio_ or _Attito_. This word is said to be derived from the cry

of grief _ahi! ahi! ahi!_ with which the leader of the chorus concludes

each strophe, and which the wailers repeat. The corresponding cry with

the Latins was _atat_, and in the Greek tragedies we find _otototoi_;

among the Germans the vehement cry of suffering is frequently

_ahtatata_, as any one may remark who notices what he ejaculates when

he has burnt his fingers, and is dancing a _ballata_ with the pain.[D]

When the Brothers of Death have arrived before the house to take away

the bier, a loud wail is again raised, and the funeral procession now

accompanies the deceased with laments to the church, where he receives

consecration, and from the church again with wail and song to the

churchyard. The obsequies are closed with a meal called the _convito_ or

_conforto_; a repast called the _veglia_ has previously been given those

who watched by the corpse, and each Brother of Death receives a cake.

The _conforto_ is given to the relations and friends of the deceased,

either in his own house or in that of a kinsman, and it is customary to

invite the guests with a pressing vehemency. It honours the departed

if the repast be on as munificent a scale as possible; and if he has

been respected during his life, it is observable in the number of the

guests. Great expense is frequently lavished on this funeral banquet

(_banchetto_), and bread and meats are distributed through the houses

of the village. Black is the Corsican mourning colour; frequently the

beard is allowed to remain for a long time uncut. When the anniversary

of the funeral comes round, the banquet is sometimes repeated.

Such is the Corsican cultus of the dead, as it is preserved at the

present day in the interior and the southern parts of the island. It is

remarkable as a remnant of primitive paganism subsisting in the midst

of our modern Christendom, and in combination with Christian usages.

How old this _ballata_ may be, and when and how it was brought into the

country, are questions difficult to answer, and I shall not here venture

upon their discussion.

The expressions of grief over beloved dead are everywhere the same—the

weeping and lamenting, the copious and eloquent allusion to what they

were in life, and to the affection that was felt for them. Passionate

emotion finds vent in lively, forcible, and dramatic indications of

grief. But the restraining power of culture, which regulates even

the emotional part of our nature, checks those over whom it has

established its sway, and refuses to the feelings all expression by

extravagant gesture. It is not so in a primitive state of society, or

among children. Neither is it so among the common people, so called,

who represent, in the midst of our civilisation, the epic period of

human development. If we wish to convince ourselves that the epic men,

heroes, chiefs, and kings, demeaned themselves as passionately in giving

expression to their grief, as the Corsicans of the present time in their

_ballata_, we must read the songs of Firdusi, Homer, and the Bible. Esau

cries aloud and weeps for the stolen blessing; Jacob rends his clothes

for Joseph; Job rends his garments, and tears his hair, and falls to the

earth, and his friends do the same, lifting up their voice and weeping,

and each rends his garment and sprinkles dust upon his head towards

heaven. David rends his garments for Saul and Jonathan, and afflicts

himself, and weeps, and laments; he does the same for Absalom: "the king

wept, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot."

Still more passionate and unbridled are the outbursts of grief with the

men of Homer. Achilles laments for Patroclus, with both hands he strews

black dust upon his head—

"Then, stretch'd in ashes, at the vast extent

Of his whole length he lay, disordering wild

With his own hands, and rending off his hair.

The maidens, captured by himself in war

And by Patroclus, shrieking from the tent

Ran forth, and hemm'd the glorious chief around;

All smote their bosoms, and all, fainting, fell."

When Hector falls, Hecuba tears her hair, and Priam piteously mourns

and laments; and afterwards he says to Achilles, when he is begging

of him a couch whereon to rest himself, that he has constantly sighed

and groaned, full of endless sorrow, "rolling myself upon the earth in

the court." So, in Firdusi, the hero Rustem tears his hair for his son

Sohrab, roars for grief, and weeps blood; Sohrab's mother throws fire

upon her head, rends her clothes, swoons continually, fills the hall

with dust, weeps day and night, and dies in a year. The expression of

the emotion is here in gigantic proportion, as the forms of the heroes

themselves are colossal.

In the Nibelungenlied, the greatest tragedy of the Vendetta, the

expression of passionate grief is no less colossal. Chrimhild raises

her wail of sorrow over the dead Siegfrid,—blood gushes from her throat,

she weeps blood above his corpse, and all the women help her with their

lamentations.

In almost all the instances alluded to, we find the passion of sorrow

pouring itself forth lyrically in the dirge. No loftier utterance of

this kind is to be found than the lament of David for Saul and Jonathan.

For the sake of the Corsican dirges, let us quote it here—

The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places:

How are the mighty fallen!

Tell it not in Gath,—publish it not in the streets of Askelon;

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,

Neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings:

For there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away,

The shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.

From the blood of the slain,—from the fat of the mighty,

The bow of Jonathan turned not back,

And the sword of Saul returned not empty.

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,

And in their death they were not divided:

They were swifter than eagles,—they were stronger than lions.

Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,

Who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights,

Who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.

I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:

Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

Thy love to me was wonderful,—passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen,—and the weapons of war perished!

The lament around the dead body of Hector, in the last canto of the

Iliad, is thoroughly dramatic, and completely resembles a _ballata_ over

the tola. Let us hear this vocero too.

(_Andromache takes up the lament._)

My hero! thou hast fall'n in prime of life,

Me leaving here a widow, and the fruit

Of our ill-fated loves—a helpless child,

Whom grown to manhood I despair to see.

For, ere that season, from her topmost height

Precipitated shall this city fall,

Since thou hast perish'd, once her sure defence,

Faithful protector of her spotless wives

And all their little ones. Those wives shall soon

In Grecian barks capacious hence be borne,

And I among the rest. But thou, my child!

Shalt either share my fate, ordain'd to drudge

Beneath some tyrant in a distant clime,

Or, seizing thy weak hand, some furious Greek

Shall headlong hurl thee from the tower of Troy

To a sad death—whose brother, it may chance,

Whose father or whose son brave Hector slew,

For he made many a Grecian bite the ground.

Thy father, boy, bore never into fight

A milky mind, and for that self-same cause

Is now bewail'd in ev'ry house of Troy.

Sorrow unutterable thou hast caused

Thy parents, Hector! but to me hast left

Largest bequest of misery, to whom,

Dying, thou neither didst thy arms extend

Forth from thy bed, nor gav'st me precious word,

To be remember'd day and night with tears.

So spake she weeping, whom her maidens all

With sighs accompanied.

(_Hecuba takes up the lament._)

Hector! far dearest of my sons to me,

Thee living must the gods have also loved,

Whose kindness even in the bands of death

Attends thee; for what son soe'er of ours

Achilles seized besides, to Samos, him,

Or Imbrus, or the dreaded Lemnian coast,

Far o'er the barren deep, for sale he sent;

But thee, poor victim of his ruthless spear,

Oft, at his wheels, around Patroclus' tomb

He dragg'd as he would waken into life

His friend whom thou hadst slain—yet still he slept.

But thou, the freshness of a fragrant flower

New-gather'd hold'st, and more resemblest far

Some youth whom Phœbus with his gentle shafts

Hath pierced at home, than one in battle slain.

So spake the queen, exciting in all hearts

Sorrow immeasurable.

(_Helen takes up the lament._)

Hector! far dearest of my brothers here!

Me godlike Paris to the shores of Troy

Seduced, and made me partner of his bed,

But, O that I had perish'd first at home!

For this, since stolen from my native land

I wander'd hither, is the twentieth year,

Yet never heard I once hard speech from thee,

Or taunt morose: but if it ever chanced

That male or female of thy father's house

Blamed me, and even if herself the queen

(For in the king, whate'er befell, I found

Always a father)—thou hast interposed

Thy gentle temper and thy gentle speech

To soothe them; therefore, with a breaking heart

Thee and my wretched self at once I mourn,

For other friend within the ample bounds

Of Ilium have I none, nor hope to hear

Kind word again, with horror view'd by all.

So spake she weeping, and the countless throng

With groans replied.[E]

The Pelasgians, Greeks, Phœnicians, the Egyptians more especially, the

ancient tribes of Italy, the Etruscans, the Romans, all lamented their

dead with song and loud wailing; this is not less true of the Celts

(_e.g._ the Irish) and the ancient Germans. Usages of this kind exist

among the uncivilised tribes of America and Africa at the present day;

and are to be found in other Italian countries besides Corsica and

Sardinia, particularly in the Neapolitan territory.

Peter Cyrnæus finds the Corsican cultus of the dead very similar to

that prevalent among the ancient Romans. Those who are acquainted with

ancient Roman customs, will agree with the Corsican historian. They had

the wailing women, called, as they are at the present day in Sardinia,

_præficæ_, and they had the dirges (_næniæ_).[F] In connexion with the

funeral obsequies of Germanicus, Tacitus speaks of the ceremonies, the

songs in praise of the deceased, the weeping and wailing and exciting

to violent grief, as ancient Roman usages. In the laws of the twelve

tables, the _ballata_ was called _lessus_, and punished as barbarous.

The laws of Solon forbade it in these terms—"The women shall not scratch

their cheeks, neither shall the _lessus_ be held at burials; the women

shall not tear the face."

The funeral-banquet is also an ancient pagan custom. Three sources

may be assigned as its origin: the necessity of refreshment after the

exhaustion induced by the ceremonies observed; the honour shown to the

deceased by a last festive meal, of which he is in a certain sense the

giver; and the religious and mystic symbolism involved in the partaking

of food—an act which denotes the return from the sphere of death to

that of life, and indicates that the mourners now once more have their

share in the common every-day world. Among the Phœnicians, Pelasgians,

Egyptians, and Etruscans, this meal consisted chiefly in beans and

eggs. These two kinds of food are, according to the ancient Oriental

and Pythagorean mysticism, symbols of the active and passive forces

of vitality and productivity. At the present time, beans and eggs are

eaten in many parts of Sardinia on occasion of the funeral repast; I

have not heard, however, that this occurs in Corsica. The Roman name for

the funeral feast was Silicernium.[G] The Trojans who have attended as

mourners the obsequies of Hector, also return to a stately banquet in

the house of Priam.

The Corsican Voceros or dirges, some specimens of which I shall now

give, are all composed in the Corsican dialect of the Italian. The

Trochaic measure usually prevails in them, though it is frequently

transgressed. Triple rhymes are general; but here also departures from

the rule occur. This measure, and the monotony of the rhymes, have

a profoundly melancholy effect, and it would be difficult to find a

rhythm more suitable as an expression of grief. The Voceros themselves

are of two classes: the wild, terrific chant of revenge, and the milder

lament for the loss of a departed friend. These songs throw much light

upon the Corsican character. They show how vengeful and hot-blooded

the temperament of the Corsican is, and how strong his passions. It is

frightful to think that these ballads are almost all composed by women,

since woman is destined to give expression to the gentler emotions

of the soul, and to soften the rude vigour of the masculine nature.

Throughout the entire range of popular poetry, I know of no instance

in which the horrible and frightful pervade the material of the ballad

to the same extent, and we observe here the strange power of poetry

in general, which can throw around even what is in itself appalling a

softening tinge of melancholy beauty. For the Corsican poetry may on

the other hand, and does frequently, become the vehicle of tenderest

emotion and the most delicate sentiment. In the Voceros is to be

found the imagery of Homer, of the Psalms, and of the Song of Solomon.

Altogether artless, they bear the stamp of improvisations which admit

of being indefinitely lengthened in the same strain; and because they

are improvisations, they are alive with the inspiration of the moment of

overflowing feeling. The inexpressible innocence and touching simplicity

of many Voceros transport us from our every-day life into the world

of children, of shepherds, or of the patriarchs. No poetic genius can

invent these utterances of nature. Beautiful songs, like tears wept by

a noble sorrow, are sometimes called pearls—I call the Voceros blood-red

Corsican corals.[H]

THE VOCERO, OR CORSICAN DIRGE.

E come i gru van cantando lor lai.—_Dante._

VOCERO ON CHILINA OF CARCHETO D'OREZZA.

(_The Mother sings._)

Ah! already they sing the Ave,

And I still hang weeping here—

All the women are come to see thee

Dress'd for death upon thy bier;

Mother's darling, my Chilina,

More than jewels bright and dear!

Whiter wast thou than the hill-snow,

Than the rice more pure and fine;

Now thy body is on the tola,

And thy soul where angels shine;

Ah, Chilina! why this cruel

Haste to leave me, daughter mine?

O Chilina! thou didst keep me

Like a lady of the land;

Bringing water, splitting firewood,

Still it was my daughter's hand;

Now has death her wings unfolded,

Lonely and bereaved I stand.

Where are now the nimble fingers,

Moving finely, moving fast,

As she spun upon the spindle,

Or the knots and meshes cast?—

Death, the sudden thief, he snatch'd her,

As he stole on tiptoe past.

How, Chilina, couldst thou leave us,

Go to yonder darksome place,

Where no firelight and no sunlight

Cheers the cold, the narrow space?

Ah, Chili! mine eyes will seek thee,

And they will not find thy face!

All so soon to be forsaken—

How could I such woe foresee?

Ah! thy sister Annadea,

She will meet thee joyfully—

She will beam with brighter glory

When she clasps her own Chili.

Thou wilt go no more to Ave,

Thou wilt go to mass no more;

My Chilina, mother's darling,

This is grief that wounds me sore—

That I now must live so lonely,

Who so blithely lived before.

(_A girl, one of her playmates, enters, and takes up the dirge._)

Now arise, arise Chilina!

We have come to fetch the bride;

Hark the bells! thy horse is waiting,

To Carcheto thou must ride,

There to stand before the altar

With the bridegroom by thy side.

—Thou movest not, thou speakest not,

She will not ope her eyes;

Thy little hands are bound, Chili,

Thy little feet are bound, Chili;

Sisters, she fain would go with us,

Loose her, and let her rise.

(_One of the women takes up the dirge._)

Hush, O hush thee, Magdalena!

Something I would ask the child;

Sooner, haply, than her mother,

She will give me answer mild.

At her head the wailing mother

Sobs and shrieks in grief so wild.

VOCERO ON THE DEATH OF CÆSARIO AND CAPPATO.[I]

Jesus, Joseph, and Marie,

And the holy sacrament,

All in blessed companie,

Help me now with my lament.

It shall ring from hill to shore—

The two heroes are no more!

Ye may walk the world all over,

Ye may search through every state,

But the good Cæsario's mate

All your quest will not discover.

He could well and wisely speak,

Bend the strong, and win the weak.

Like a dog the base Mastini

Cowardly revenge did take;

Stealthily crept within brake,

Hounded on by the Mastini.

There he waited for his foe,

There he dealt the dastard blow.

Pauses now with carbine ready,

Sees approach Chiucchinu;

When he has him full in view,

Takes a certain aim and steady;

And he sees him earthward stagger,

As if struck through with a dagger.

Cappato in wrath up-started,

Fierce as lion from his lair;

At Tangone's throat he darted,

Who for life doth make his prayer.

Dearly must he rue the day,

That he mingled in the fray.

Paolo stayed when these departed;—

In the covert of the wood

He will tarry, steadfast-hearted,

He will bear a name of blood;

He will sweep down on the plain,

He will cover it with slain.

Patience till the winter's snow

Be dissolved from off the land;

Then shall sudden vengeance flow

From the mountains to the strand!

Spreading, catching, far and near,

Like the fiery flame's career.

Stab the richest and the noblest,

Stab a dozen—'tis too few;

That were hardly worthy vengeance

For the boots of Chiucchinu.

Vengeance too must pity show

For the hapless Cappato.

So concludes my lamentation,

I have now no more to say.

Wo upon you in the day

Of your coming desolation!

Take good heed, that may avail;

But if not, the mourners wail.

VOCERO OF A MAIDEN UPON THE DEATH OF HER TWO BROTHERS WHO WERE SLAIN IN

ONE DAY.

(_Mixed dialect of either side of the mountains._)

(_The sister sings._)

Oh! the bearing proud of Piero,

Oh! the boasting of Orazio—

They had made the land a desert

Betwixt here and San Brancazio,

Satiated with our heart's blood

Are Michele and Orazio.

Death, O death, how black and dreadful—

How remorseless is thy sway!

From a home once full thou'st taken,

Save the nest-egg, all away;

Is it fit that I, an orphan,

Here as head of house should stay?

I alone, amongst all women,

By this hearth my place maintain'd;

Over five strong, gallant brothers,

I the right to rule obtain'd:

Past and gone that sweet dominion,

Lost the prize that I had gain'd!

I will put on the faldetta,

Black my garment as their pall;

For no more one ray of gladness

On this lonely heart can fall:

Which has lost five noble brothers,

Father, mother—seven in all.

I will send at once to Asco,

Blackest pine-black I will crave,

Black as raven's wing the raiment

That from henceforth I will have;

While my life ebbs back and forwards

Like the rain-flood in their grave.

See ye not the ceaseless fountains

From these clouded eyes that well,

O'er the two beloved brothers

That in one hour bravely fell?

Two deaths are at once proclaimed

By the tolling of one bell.

Thou my crown of gold so ruddy—

Thou my ring of precious stone;

O Pierù! my former gladness—

O Orà! my present moan!

In the Chapel of Tallanu,

Like you two there is not one.

And to you, too, Rev'rend Curate,

Bitter words I needs must say;

For the love my kin still show'd you,

Thanklessly you now repay;

Three years since we number'd seven—

You have borne them all away.

Only to the first street's ending

Will I follow in your train—

Follow, blinded by my weeping—

Weeping, get me home again,

This the saddest, last procession

Of the five dear brothers slain.

VOCERO OF A HERDSMAN'S WIFE OF TALAVO, ON HER HUSBAND.

On the beach his corpse is lying

Where the two old cork-trees spread;

O Francesco! faithful herdsman!

Fearful 'tis to see thee dead!

How shall I, by thee forsaken,

Gloomy forest-pathways tread?

I will tear away the branches

From yon spreading Palo-tree—

Leathern bags and caps shall no more

From its boughs suspended be;

And the sheep-dog he most valued,

With his ears clipp'd, all shall see.

Wo! wo! wo! my heart is breaking,

Let your wailing fill the air;

O my brothers! O my sisters!

Such a stroke is hard to bear.

From the house the head is taken,

God has doom'd me to despair.

(_After the burial is over, the shepherdess returns to her

cabin, and describes the ceremony to her friends and

relations._)

On the bier I saw them lay him,

Towards Prunelli carry slow;

There, in dumb but heartfelt mourning.

Flocks and cattle bleat and low—

E'en the kids between the hurdles

Bah, bah, bah! their loss to show.

In the Church of Blessed Mary,

In the holy churchyard ground,

Chants and prays the rev'rend Father,

With attendant priests around;

Loud as at a noble's burial,

Peals the sad and solemn sound.

When the funeral was over,

Oh, how hastily each rose!

Straight an open grave discov'ring,

My Francesco to enclose;

Borne on by a rush of people.

Towards that grave the coffin goes.

Oh! but what their cruel purpose!

Oh! the thought is endless wo;

I looked down, in hopes the sunlight

Through some grave-wall chink might flow;

But I saw then my husband lower'd

Into darkness—lower'd slow.

VOCERO ON THE DEATH OF ROMANA, THE DAUGHTER OF DARIOLA DANESI OF ZUANI.

(_The Mother sings._)

See, she lies now on the tola,

She, my child of sixteen years.

Darling daughter! her short life-lease

Has been fraught with pain and tears,

Now her snowy festal garment—

Her transparent veil she wears.

In that snowy festal garment

Far away she now must go,

For the Lord of all forbids her

Longer to remain below.

They who wear an angel's semblance,

Early to the angels go.

Where, belov'd, are now the roses

On thy chisell'd cheeks and lips?—

All the blossoms of thy beauty

Death with icy fingers strips;

Seems the change on which I'm gazing,

Like a sudden sun-eclipse.

Oh! amongst the band of maidens

Thou wert fairest of the fair;

To the rose all flowers are subject,

With the moon no stars compare;

Other charms with thine contrasted,

Show'd thy beauty still more rare.

When the youths from yonder village

To thy presence would aspire,

Straight they seem'd like pine-wood torches

Kindled at a glowing fire.

Thou to all wert mild and courteous,

But not one might venture nigher.

In the church each eye was straining

To espy thee as we pass'd;

All, from first to last, kept gazing,

But thine eyes were downward cast.

Service ended, thou wouldst pray me,

"Let us hurry homeward fast."

Oh how highly wert thou valued,

Honour'd both by great and small;

Taught and train'd by Heavenly teaching,

Wise with wisdom best of all!

From the world thy spirit screening,

Prayer and praise its special call.

Who can ever soothe my anguish?

Oh, my glory and my pride!

Since the Lord has bid thee leave me,

Call'd thee with Him to abide;

Wherefore does not His compassion

Bid my agony subside!

Yet in heaven thou'rt resting sweetly,

From all burdens smiling free;

If too bright for earth thy beauty,

As all own'd who look'd on thee—

How much brighter, thro' its presence,

Henceforth Paradise will be!

But for me the earth will only

Seem a place of wo and tears,

And each day of hopeless longing

Lengthen to a thousand years;

While I ask of thee, my daughter,

From each stranger that appears.

Death, why did'st thou from my bosom

Such a loving daughter tear?

Wherefore, in a nest now empty,

Leave me lonely to despair?

When I miss her care and tendance,

How shall I life's burden bear?

Lonely 'midst my kindred standing,

Helpless with my neighbours by;

Who will wipe away the pain-drops

When I lay me down to die?

Who will give the drink I thirst for

When the fever rages high?

Oh! thou fondly cherish'd daughter,

Think upon my wretched case,

When grown old, by all forsaken;

Far from help or friendly face,

Never knowing peace or comfort,

Even for a moment's space.

If, like thee, I were permitted

From this cold world to depart,

Having seen thy early fading—

Hope and glory of my heart!

I should find thee up in heaven,

And live with thee where thou art.

Therefore pray our dear Lord Jesus,

Till He calls me ceaseless pray!

For my only hope I cannot

Live on thus from day to day—

Cannot end these vain lamentings—

Cannot weep my tears away!

VOCERO OF A GIRL FOR HER FATHER.

I came forth from Calanca

At the twelfth hour of the night,

And everywhere I sought him,

I sought him by torchlight,—

And when I found my father,

'Twas his corpse that met my sight.

(_Another girl enters, seeking a relative, also slain._)

Ye who would find Matteju,

Go farther up the steep;

The dead here is my father,

And I must stay to weep.

Take apron, trowel, hammer,

My father, and come away,

For you must work at the chapel

Of San Marcello to-day;

But they had slain my father,

And my brother wounded lay.

Oh, scissors to cut my long locks,

Make haste and bring to me!

Let me staunch with my hair those gashes

Where the blood is running free—

For the red drops on my fingers

Are a fearful sight to see.

I will dye me a mandilè,

In his blood I will dye it red;

And when I have time to be merry,

I will deck with it my head.[J]

Now I bear him to Calanca—

To the Church of the Holy Cross,

Still crying, O speak, my father!

Still wailing for my loss—

For they have crucified him,

Like Christ upon the cross.

TEXT OF THE PRECEDING VOCERO.

Eo partu dalle Calanche

Circa quattr' ore di notte:

Mi ne falgu cu la teda

A circà per tutte l'orte,

Per truvallu lu mio vabu:

Ma li avianu datu morte.

Cullatevene più in su,

Chi truvarete a Matteju;

Perchè questu è lu mio vabu,

E l'aghiu da pienghie eju.

Via, pigliatemi u scuzzale

La cazzola e lu martellu.

Nun ci vulete andà, vabu,

A travaglià a San Marcellu?

Tombu m'hann lu miò vabu,

E feritu u miò fratellu.

Or circatemi e trisore,

E qui prestu ne venite:

Vogliu toudemi i capelli

Per tuppalli le ferite;

Chi di lu sangue di vabu

N'achiu carcu le miò dite.

Di lu vostru sangue, o vabu,

Bogliu tinghiemi un mandile;

Lu mi vogliu mette a collu

Quandu avrachiu oziu di ride.

Eo collu per le Calanche

Falgu per la Santa Croce,

Sempre chiamand uvi, vabu:

Rispunditemi una voce.

Mi l'hanu crucifissatu

Cume Ghesù Cristu in croce.

I have added the original text of this vocero, to give the reader some

idea of the Corsican dialect, and enable him to compare it, if he is

interested in such matters, with the Italian spoken on the Continent. I

find a great resemblance between the dialect of Corsica and that used

by the lower orders in Rome, particularly in Trastevere.[K] All the

Italian popular dialects, however, have a tendency to drop or mutilate

the infinitive endings, _are_ and _ire_, and to substitute _r_ for _l_.

The Corsican says _soretra_ for _sorella_. Philologists have pronounced

the Corsican one of the purest of the Italian dialects, and Tommaseo

especially has much to say in its praise in his collection of Tuscan,

Corsican, and Greek popular songs—which contains also, though in a

defective form, a number of Corsican dirges, with elucidations. In this

book he calls the Corsican dialect "a powerful language, and of all the

dialects of the Italian tongue, one of the most thoroughly Italian."

It seems to me to be genuine gold compared with the _patois_ of the

Piedmontese and Lombards, and the dialects of Parma and Bologna. Even

from the single specimen communicated, the reader will see that the

language of the Corsicans, though no doubt one of the lower forms of

Italian, is soft and graceful.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See Browning's Ballad of "The Red Piper of Hameln."

[B] Blackie's translation.

[C] Blackie.

[D] An analogous interjection in English is _tut! tut!_ which is

an expression of annoyance merely, and not of suffering; in Scotch

_hootoot!_—_Tr._

[E] Cowper's translation.

[F] A specimen of the Roman nænia has already been given, with a

view to its being remembered in connexion with the present subject.

I refer to Seneca's dirge on Claudius, which is, however, strictly

speaking, parodistic.

[G] _Siliqua_, in Latin, the pod or husk of any leguminous

plant.—_Tr._

[H] Of the numerous dirges given by the author, a few of the more

characteristic have been selected as likely to furnish an idea of

the Corsican Vocero.—_Tr._

[I] This wild song of vengeance, which is popular in Corsica, is

said to have been composed by the mistress of a certain friar

(!!)—a friend of Cæsario's. As the ballad predicts, the Paolo

therein mentioned—a relative of the fallen men, afterwards avenged

them; he then took to the bush, and after living some years as

bandit, fell into the hands of justice.

[J] The irony is here so wild as to be at first hardly

intelligible. Red is usually a gay and festive colour; when _she_

is disposed to be gay—when her absorbing grief leaves her "leisure

for laughing," as she says in the original, it will be when she can

wear a mandile dyed in her father's blood—that is, never. By the

bold figure in the concluding lines of the vocero, she intimates

at once the victim's innocence and the cruel circumstances of his

death.—_Tr._

[K] Quarter of the city beyond the Tiber.—_Tr._

BOOK VII.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

TO CORTE THROUGH BALAGNA.

I gave up the thought of a journey which I had at one time intended

to make along the coast from Calvi to Sagone, where the large gulfs

of Porto and Sagone, and those of Galeria and Girolata run into the

country. The region is for the most part uncultivated, and the roads

are frightful.

I travelled through the glorious valley of Balagna by the Diligenza

which runs between Calvi and Corte. As I have already mentioned, this

large, beautiful, and well-cultivated district receives the name of

the Garden of Corsica. Lofty mountains enclose it, snow-capped summits

like Mount Tolo, and the mighty Grosso—heights of the finest forms, and

that would enchant the landscape painter. Great numbers of villages are

seen upon the slopes, San Reparato, Muro, Belgodere, Costa, Speloncata,

Feliceto, Nessa, Occhiatana—all formerly seats of noble families and

Caporali, and full of memories of old times. The Malaspinas once ruled

here, the Tuscan margraves of Massa and the Lunigian marches, a race of

powerful seigniors, whom Dante celebrates in the _Divine Comedy_. When

he finds Currado Malaspina in purgatory, we have the following verses:—

"Oh, never have I seen thy land, I said;

But where throughout all Europe may be found

The spot to which thy glory hath not spread?

The fame that o'er this house such lustre throws

Makes both its nobles and the land renowned:

E'en he who ne'er was there, their greatness knows."

The Malaspinas built the village of Speloncato. Subsequently to the year

1019, five counts of this house had come to Corsica—Guglielmo, Ugo,

Rinaldo, Isuardo, and Alberto Rufo. The family is spread in numerous

branches over the Italian countries.

In later times the democratic constitution of the Terra del Commune

deprived the barons of their power in Balagna. The Corsican popular

assemblies (_veduta_) were frequently held here, in the Field of

Campiolo. At one of these vedutas, the brave Renuccio della Rocca

displayed a degree of heroic fortitude which deserves our admiration.

Filippini narrates the incident. Renuccio was in the act of addressing

the assembly, when his son, a youth of fourteen, who chanced to be

riding over the field, was hurled by his startled horse upon the point

of the lance carried by a squire who rode behind him. The dying youth

was brought to his father. But Renuccio, with unaltered mien, continued

in his speech to rouse his countrymen to insurrection against Genoa.

This Spartan self-command, the heroism of Gaffori, the heroism of

Leoni of Balagna before the tower of Nonza, always remind me of the

manly firmness of Xenophon. The news that his son Gryllus had fallen

in battle, came to Xenophon when he was engaged in offering sacrifice.

The father, overcome at first by the sudden intelligence, took the

sacrificial wreath from his head; but when he was told that his son

had fallen bravely fighting, he immediately replaced it, and calmly

continued his act of worship. Indeed, these stout-hearted Corsicans seem

more Spartan than the Spartans themselves.

I found in Balagna a great many fields of grain already cut—a beautiful

sight in Corsican regions. Everywhere, especially in the vicinity of the

villages, are the most luxuriant and magnificent groves of chestnut,

walnut, and almond trees, gardens of oranges and citrons, and wood

on wood of olives. The excellent road keeps close by the foot of the

mountains, and from all points the traveller enjoys the finest views

towards the sea or into the hills. The largest villages of Balagna are

Muro and Belgodere; the latter of which owes its name to its beautiful

situation. Belgodere might be a sanctuary of Pallas, it lies embosomed

in such luxuriant groves of her favourite tree.

It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where

the olive attains such a size as it does in the Balagna. The thickness

of its stem, its abundance of branches, and the quantity of fruit it

produces, are equally astonishing. It is mighty as a beech, and in the

heat of noon you rest cool under its shelter. The olive is a tree that

one cannot but love. It has not the imposing magnificence of the oak or

the plane; its bole, its grayish green, long, narrow leaves, remind us

of our own homely willow; but it is laden with riches—with the very fat

of the earth, and it is associated with all the poetry of human culture.

Sitting under a gray olive by the sea-strand, we are transported to

the sacred, sunny East, where our fancy has been at home ever since

we turned over the leaves of the picture-Bible, and heard a mother's

stories of the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem. How often have we imagined

to ourselves those olive-groves! Then, again, in the whispering of its

branches, we hear the wisdom of Minerva, and the poetry of the Hellenes,

and are borne away to the land of Homer, of Pindar, of Æschylus, to

the Muses and gods of Olympus. The olive is thus doubly dear to us as

at once a Christian and a Hellenic tree; its branch is more precious

than that of the laurel, it is the beautiful symbol of prosperity and

peace, and a man's first prayer to the immortal gods should be: Send

into my life the green olive-branch. They send us all kinds of them, the

laurel-branch, the myrtle-branch; and they send also the cypress-bough;

with humility be the award received.

There are various species of olives in the Balagna—the Sabine

(_Sabinacci_), the Saracen (_Saraceni_), and the Genoese

(_Genovesi_);—named according to their descent, like noble families of

Signori. The third family is the most common. It is ascribed to the

Genoese, who, during the government of Agostino Doria, compelled the

Corsicans to plant olives in great numbers. This is therefore at least

one beautiful and peaceful memorial of Genoese rule in Corsica. When

the olive was first introduced into Corsica, I am unable to say. One

of the complaints in the epigram of Seneca is, that the gift of Pallas

does not exist on the island. Yet it appears to me hardly credible that

the olive was not cultivated on the island before Seneca's time. The

Corsican olives have at present the reputation of resisting better than

all others the changes of the weather; the great Humboldt awards them

this praise. They require little attention. The oldest branches are cut

off to strengthen the tree, the soil about its roots is loosened, and

manure is laid round the trunk. The olives are collected when they fall

off. Twenty pounds of olives produce five pounds of clear oil. This

is put into large jars, in which it stands till the month of May. The

olive-tree yields abundantly every three years.

The birds come and carry away the olive kernels to the four winds of

heaven, scattering them over the face of the country. The island thus

becomes covered with wild olive-bushes, which flourish lustily on

mountain and in valley, waiting to be improved. In the year 1820, an

attempt was made to count them, and their number was said to be twelve

millions. The richest olive-districts at the present time in Corsica

are Balagna, Nebbio, and the country round Bonifazio.

We left the province of Balagna at the village of Novella. At this

point the road bends into the mountainous interior, and for hours the

Diligenza rolls on through narrow valleys, and between barren rocky

hills, not a hamlet in sight, till we reach Ponte alla Leccia in the

valley of the Golo, where the principal highways of Corsica, from Calvi,

from Ajaccio, and from Bastia, meet. You now drive along the Golo,

through a pleasant valley. To the right lies the pastoral district of

Niolo, the present canton of Calacuccia—a remarkable region, encircled

by lofty mountains, in which lie the two lakes of Neno and Ereno. The

district forms a natural stronghold, for it opens only at four points,

towards Vico, Venaco, Calvi, and Corte. A steep road, called the _Scala

di Santa Regina_, leads to Corte. In Niolo live the strongest men

in Corsica, patriarchal shepherds, who have faithfully preserved the

customs of their forefathers.

There are many remarkable places on the road to Corte, as for example,

Soveria, the home of the brave family of the Cervoni. It was Thomas

Cervoni who rescued Pasquale Paoli at the cloister of Alando, when he

was besieged there by the furious Matra. The reader will remember that

Cervoni, who was at feud with Paoli, had his weapons put into his hands

by his own mother, who, threatening to curse him if he refused to obey

her, drove him from the house to rescue his foe. Cervoni hastened to

the besieged convent, and Matra was slain. It is no ordinary pleasure

to wander through a country like this island of Corsica, where there

is not a city or village, a mountain or valley, which is not associated

with some deed of heroism.

Cervoni's son was the talented general, who, as officer at Toulon, won

his first laurels along with Napoleon. He distinguished himself at Lodi;

in the year 1799, he was commandant of Rome. It was he who announced

to Pope Pius VI. that his power was at an end, and that he must leave

Rome. Cervoni made his name terrible in that city, as is evinced by

an incident related by Valery. He once in the Tuileries stepped up to

Pope Pius VII. at the head of the Generals, and complimented him. His

fine voice and beautiful Italian pronunciation astonished the Pope, and

he said a great many flattering things to Cervoni. The latter hereupon

remarked: "_Santo padre, sono quasi Italiano._" "Oh!" "_Sono Corso._"

"Oh! oh!" "_Sono Cervoni!_" "Oh! oh! oh!" and at the mention of the

dreadful name the Pope receded horror-stricken to the fireplace. In the

year 1809, a cannon-ball carried away the head of Marshal Cervoni at

Regensburg.

Near Soveria stands Alando, famous as connected with the name of

Sambucuccio, the ancient legislator and Lycurgus of the Corsicans, and

founder of their democratic constitution. The scarcely distinguishable

ruins of his castle are shown upon a rock. In 1466, four hundred years

later than Sambucuccio, one of his descendants was vicegerent of the

Corsican nation. Some of the Caporali resided in this quarter, in the

neighbouring Omessa. Originating as tribunes of the people, and intended

in the democratic system of Sambucuccio to defend the rights of the

communes, they succumbed in the course of time to a malady that never

fails to undermine and destroy the wisest human arrangements—ambition

and the love of self-aggrandizement, and became like the seigniors,

the most oppressive petty tyrants. In Filippini's time, we find that

historian still complaining that the Caporali were the most dreadful

scourges of Corsica.

Chestnuts thrive around Alando, but the region is poor. Black sheep and

goats find their nourishment on the mountain heaths. Their wool is here

made into the Corsican pelone.

After crossing the Alluraja, a lofty range of hills between the rivers

Golo and Tavignano, we descend, on an admirable road, towards Corte.

CHAPTER II.

THE CITY OF CORTE.

The arrondissement of Corte, the central district of the island,

embraces fifteen cantons and 113 communes, and contains a population of

55,000. The town itself has about 5000 inhabitants.

Corte is an inland city with a situation not less imposing than those

of the Corsican seaports. The panorama of brown hills in the midst of

which it lies, the citadel on an inaccessible and rugged crag, give the

town an air of iron defiance. Mountains rise on every side in the most

varied forms. To the north the heights are low, and mostly dome-shaped,

covered with copsewood, or fields of grain. The summer has clad these

hills in a dark brown, and the region thus wears an aspect of the utmost

sternness. They are the last spurs of the ranges that form the watershed

between the Golo and Tavignano, and separate two valleys, the pastoral

dale of Niolo, and the valley of the Tavignano. At the opening of the

latter, where the Tavignano is joined by the Restonica, lies Corte.

Three high and craggy hills command the entrance to this valley. Both

rivers have forced a channel for themselves through deep ravines, and

rush into one another over fragments of shattered cliffs. There is a

stone bridge over each.

The little city has only one main street, which is newly built, and

is called the Corso; an alley of elms gives it a singularly rural

appearance. And here too I was astonished at the lonely seclusion, the

idyllic stillness, that so peculiarly characterize the Corsican towns.

You really believe yourself in the farthest nook of the world, and cut

off from all connection with its ongoings.

The city is venerable from its associations with events in Corsican

history. In the time of Paoli it was the centre of his democratic

government, and in ancient times the residence of Moorish kings; it was

important in every period as the central point of the island, and as

possessing a fortress which frequently decided the course and issue of

a campaign.

The citadel has a singular appearance. It is the Acropolis of Corsica.

It stands on a black, steep, and rugged crag, which rises over the river

Tavignano. Walls, towers, the old town—which the citadel encloses—all

look black, ruinous, and desolate. They have been battered in a thousand

sieges. This castle of Corte has been assaulted and defended oftener

than Belgrade. The brave Vincentello d'Istria laid the foundations of

the present structure, in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The

loop-hole is still shown from which the Genoese suspended Gaffori's

son, to deter his father from continuing his cannonade of the fortress.

Enacting itself on and around this grim, giddy height, how wild must

have been that heroic scene! The action of Gaffori is one of the noblest

traits to be found in the range of Corsican history, which, as I have

already said, for every instance of magnanimity in Greeks and Romans,

can produce another no way inferior. The spirit that has animated this

Corsican people, has proved itself no less heroic than that which we

admire in Brutus and Timoleon; but the acts of national and individual

heroism which this spirit produced, have lain buried in the obscurity

of the period and the locality.

The name of Gaffori is Corte's fairest ornament, and his little house,

still standing pierced with balls, the most splendid monument the city

can show. This house preserves another heroic association, connected

with Gaffori's brave and high-souled wife. The Genoese, whose constant

policy it was to use the families of dreaded Corsicans as hostages, and

to oppose natural affection to love of country, on one occasion took

advantage of Gaffori's absence from home to attack his house, in order

to secure the person of his wife. But she instantly barricaded the door

and window, and, with a few friends who had hurried to her assistance,

defended herself, musket in hand, for days against the Genoese, who

showered a storm of bullets upon the house. The little garrison was

reduced to the utmost extremity, and her friends counselled her to

capitulate; Gaffori's wife, however, conveyed a cask of powder into a

cellar, and seizing a match, swore that she would blow up the house

the moment they ceased to fire upon the besiegers. Her friends, who

knew her desperate courage, continued their resistance, and at length

Gaffori himself appeared with a band of Corsicans, and rescued his wife.

After the murder of Gaffori, this woman took his son, the boy who had

once been bound to the walls of the castle, and made him swear to hate

the Genoese and avenge his father. Hamilcar did the same with his son

Hannibal in ancient times.

In this house of Gaffori's, Carlo Bonaparte lived with his wife Letitia

in 1778; it was a house worthy to give origin to a Napoleon.

Many memories of Paoli are connected with a house which bears the name

of the Palazzo de Corte, and was the seat of Paoli's government, and his

residence. Here is the room in which he worked, a mean-looking little

place enough, as beseemed the legislator of the Corsicans. They tell

that the great man, who was not safe from the balls of the assassin,

kept the windows of this room always barricaded; and in fact, the

window-shutters are still to be seen lined with cork, as they were in

his time. The National Assembly had decreed him a guard of twenty-four

men, acting in this like the ancient democracies of Greece; he had

another body-guard always in the room beside him, consisting of six

Corsican dogs. I cannot help being reminded here of his contemporary

and admirer Frederick the Great, and how he too, in his cabinet, was

always surrounded by dogs; but these were kept for amusement or ornament

merely—the pretty Biche, and the graceful Alcmene, and other greyhounds.

The scene is characteristically different. If Paoli were painted in

the company of his dogs, as Frederick the Great has so often been

represented surrounded by his, it would make rather a wild picture: the

Corsican hero in his mean-looking cabinet, writing by the fireplace,

wrapped in a coarse woollen gown, behind a barricaded window, grim,

shaggy wolf-hounds crouched upon the floor—there we have a Corsican

historical _genre_ painting.

In another room, formerly the hall where the Council of Nine sat, are

preserved some very interesting relics; the rods, to wit, which were

to have supported the canopy of Paoli's throne. Paoli and a throne?

Impossible! Had the great democrat a hankering after kingly emblems?

So it is affirmed; the story is as follows:—One day workmen were seen

erecting a throne in the National Palace. It was of crimson damask, hung

with gold fringes, and supported, above the Corsican arms, a golden

crown, so placed that when Paoli seated himself, it stood over his

head. To suit the throne, there were nine smaller crimson chairs, for

the members of the Council of Nine. When the councillors had assembled

in the hall, the door of Paoli's room opened, and Paoli, as it is said,

in a magnificent robe of state, his head covered, and his sword by his

side, entered, and moved towards the throne. A murmur of astonishment

and displeasure instantly arose among the councillors, followed by a

deep silence. Paoli stopped, was disconcerted, and he never took his

seat upon the throne.

I have found so many confirmations of this story, that it seems to me

almost presumption to doubt it. If it is true, it is a remarkable trait

in the character of the great man, and at least a proof that human

weakness everywhere asserts its sway, and that no mortal is safe from

the moment when he may be overcome by vanity and outside show. Paoli and

a throne—there can hardly be a greater contradiction. Liberty and the

Corsican people were the noble man's loftiest throne, and no potentate

ever occupied one more glorious than that plain arm-chair on which Paoli

sat, the legislator and deliverer of a people.

His enemies have accused him of aiming at regal authority, but they

wrong him in this, and Paoli's history gives the lie to the charge.

Did he wish, perhaps, by means of regal emblems, to secure from foreign

countries and from his own people a greater degree of respect for the

state over which he presided, and which still bore the time-honoured

appellation of the Kingdom of Corsica? We have no other instances of

his indulging in kingly pomp. He, and all the other members of the

government, went about in the common dress of the country; their clothes

were of the Corsican wool, they lived like the simplest commoners. The

heads of the state were distinguishable from the people only by their

superior intelligence, and it was merely to give the French, in matters

of exterior as well as in those of more importance, the impression of

a regular and formal government, that he ordered the members of the

Supreme Council to wear a distinct dress, a green coat, gold-laced—green

and gold being the Corsican colours. He and they put on this official

dress for the first time, when French officers came first to Corte.

The country's rulers were to appear in a manner becoming their dignity.

This was, however, a concession to French etiquette which we cannot but

lament, because in making it Paoli ceased to maintain himself superior

to appearances, and abolished the beautiful democratic equality which

had previously expressed itself even in dress, by some pieces of gold

lace. The Corsicans were entitled to wear their woollen blouse with

greater pride than the French their glittering uniforms. Trifling and

subordinate as these matters may in themselves appear, they nevertheless

furnish material for thought. For time makes unessential differences

essential, and of extrinsic makes intrinsic. There is in time an

invisible influence for evil, which gradually stains all that is pure,

dwarfs all that is great, debases all that is noble. In this world

of ours, it is so and not otherwise; exalted virtue is a phenomenon

confined to the period of _struggle_ towards a great aim. In Corsica

it has often made me sad to think, that all those heroic exertions of

its people, all those battles for freedom, have proved fruitless; and

that now, in the land of Sampiero, of Gaffori, and of Paoli, "the vain

nation" bears rule. Yet it would have been an experience still more

sad, had the state of Paoli sickened of itself, and yielded to human

selfishness. For my part, I do not believe that it would have escaped

this universal fate. For true freedom exists only in Utopia. Mankind

appears to be capable of it only in the highest, most sacred moments.

On one occasion Paoli received in this Palazzo Nazionale a very splendid

embassy. A ship of Tunis had stranded on the coast of Balagna, and Paoli

had not only restored to the shipwrecked strangers all the property of

which the peasantry of the region had deprived them, but hospitably

entertained them, and sent them home to the Bey of Tunis under the

conduct of two officers, and well supplied with every necessary for

their journey. The Bey thereupon sent an embassy to Paoli to thank

him, and convey to him the assurance that he would remain eternally

his and his country's friend, and that no Corsican would ever sustain

injury within the bounds of his territories. The ambassador from Tunis

kneeled down before Paoli, and, putting his hand to his forehead, said

in Italian, _Il Bey ti saluta, e ti vuol bene_—the Bey greets thee, and

wishes thee well. He brought him as presents, a beautiful, splendidly

caparisoned horse, two ostriches, a tiger, a sabre set with diamonds;

and after residing some days in Corte, returned again to Africa.

Close to Corte lies the old convent of the Franciscans—a ruin of

considerable size. In Paoli's time, the Corsican parliament assembled

in the church of this convent; and from its pulpit not a few noble

patriots have lifted their earnest voices. Many and not vain sacrifices

were made to liberty in this church, and her name was not heard as an

empty phrase. Those who called upon it, also died for it. In the year

1793, a general assembly of the Corsicans had met on the open ground

before the convent; the time was stormy, for the grayhaired Paoli stood

impeached of high treason by the National Convention of France. Pozzo

di Borgo, that unrelenting enemy of Napoleon—like him, a citizen of

Ajaccio—climbed upon a tree, and delivered a powerful and fiery speech

in defence of Paoli, whose accusers, the furious clubbists, Arena and

the Bonapartes, were here declared infamous.

At the present day, wandering about in the streets of the little city,

which are silent as the grave, and beneath whose shady elms here and

there, poor-looking Corsicans idle in dreamy listlessness, one can

hardly believe that scarcely a hundred years ago such an obscure,

secluded nook was the seat of the most enlightened political wisdom of

the age.

Paoli founded a university in Corte; and he here called the first

Corsican printing-press and the first Corsican newspaper into existence.

From this university knowledge and enlightenment were to spread like a

flood of light over the mountains, and into all the valleys of Corsica,

dispelling the mediæval barbarism of her inhabitants. I have already,

in the History of the Corsicans, mentioned this university, and spoken

of its high merits as a patriotic institution. Many of Corsica's ablest

men have been its pupils—talented advocates, who form in this island

the majority of the literary class. Carlo Bonaparte, Napoleon's father,

studied at this university. The young institution fell, however, when

the country lost its freedom. Paoli on his deathbed set apart a legacy

for its restoration, and with the help of this capital a sort of college

was re-established in the year 1836. There are at present a director and

seven professors for the sciences connected with it, but its condition

is not very flourishing. An institution of this academic kind is

also perhaps less suited to the wants of Corsica than good commercial

schools.

I found among the Corsicans many learned and highly cultivated men,

and here in Corte I became acquainted with a gentleman, the extent of

whose reading in the literature of the Romanic languages astounded me.

He is the son of one of the brave captains who, after the battle of

Ponte Nuovo, remained in arms till the last moment, and whom I have

mentioned by name. His memory is so retentive, that he knows by heart

the best passages of all the great Italian, French, and Latin authors,

and that it is a slight matter for him to repeat whole pages of Tasso

or Ariosto, and long extracts from Voltaire or Macchiavelli, or from

Livy, Horace, Boileau, or Rousseau. Talking with him of literature on

one occasion, I asked him if he had ever read any works of Goethe. "No,"

said our well-read friend, "Pope is the only English author with whom

I am acquainted."

Some gentlemen, whose agreeable acquaintance I made at the _table

d'hôte_ of my inn, among them an artist, the only Corsican painter with

whom I became acquainted on the island, took me to the marble quarries

in the vicinity of Corte. A quarry of this kind was discovered not

long ago in the rocks above the Restonica. The stone is of a bluish

colour, with reddish-white veins, and is available for architecture and

ornaments. We found the workmen occupied in getting a large block, of

which a pillar was to be made, down the hill. It was laid on rollers,

and shoved by means of the Archimedean screw to the edge of the incline,

at the foot of which the blocks are dressed. The large and beautiful

stone slid rapidly down, enveloping itself in a cloud of dust, and as it

forced its way onwards, rung clear as a bell. At the foot of the hill on

which this rich quarry lies, the Restonica turns a mill that cuts the

marble into plates. Seven days are required to cut a block into thirty

of these. In Corte, therefore, Seneca's assertion is now disproved—_non

pretiosus lapis hic cæditur_—here no costly stone is hewn. Speaking

generally, however, the philosopher's words are still applicable, for

Corsica's treasures of beautiful stone have remained dead capital.

CHAPTER III.

AMONG THE GOAT-HERDS OF MONTE ROTONDO.

————"tomo un puño de bellotas en la mano, y mirandolas atentamente

sotto la voz a semejantes razones: Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos

aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados."—DON

QUIXOTE.

I had formed the resolution of ascending the highest mountain in

Corsica, Monte Rotondo, which lies about half a day's journey to the

south-west of Corte, and may almost be considered as the middle point

of the island. Although the excursion was described to me as most

fatiguing, still I hoped to find a clear day and sufficient remuneration

for my trouble. But what I most of all wished was, some insight into

the still entirely primitive life of the herdsmen.

I hired a guide and a mule, and, provided with a little bread and some

calabashes of wine, early on the morning of the 28th of July I rode

into the hills. The road, a shepherd's track, never leaves the valley

of the wild Restonica, from its confluence with the Tavignano, close

by the town, up to the very summit of Monte Rotondo, where it has its

source. The bed of this beautiful mountain-stream, is, during most of

its course, a ravine of gloomy and impressive character. In the vicinity

of Corte, it expands into a valley of considerable breadth, in which

chestnut and walnut trees thrive. As you ascend, it grows narrower and

narrower; the walls of rock on each side rise in black, gigantic masses,

shadowed with dark-green, natural wood, of old pines and larches.

My sure-footed mule clambered safely up the narrowest paths along the

very edge of abysses; and a glance downwards into these, where the

Restonica foamed milk-white far below, had something in it both of

terror and of beauty. A magnificent forest of pines and larches received

me as the sun got higher. Very picturesque are these giant trees—the

pine with its broad, green roof, and the larch, like the cedar of

Lebanon, gnarled, soaring, and rich in branches. Tall erica, box, and

wild myrtles, covered with a snow of blossoms, clustered in profusion

round their mighty stems. And the fragrance of all those medicinal

herbs, in which the mountains of Corsica are so rich, made the air of

the woods balsamic and refreshing.

My guide kept on before me at a rapid pace. I sometimes almost

shuddered, when I saw myself alone with him in this wilderness of woods

and rocks, and he threw a backward glance on me. He was an ill-favoured

fellow, and had a villanous eye. I learned afterwards that there was

blood on his hands—that he was a murderer. A year previously he had

stabbed a Lucchese dead, with a single thrust, on the market-place of

Corte.

Riding for hours through these romantic mountain-solitudes you hear

nothing but the rushing of the streams, the screaming of falcons, and

now and then the clear whistle of a goat-herd calling to his goats.

The herdsmen live in caverns or in huts, on the declivities of Monte

Rotondo, to the topmost ridge of which their flocks clamber. The highest

community of shepherds is to be found at an altitude of 5000 feet above

the level of the sea.

After three hours' ride I reached the first of these singular

stations—the Rota del Dragone. Descending from the edge of the ravine

towards the water, I saw a black, sooty cave before me, running, like

a vault, into the cliff, below enormous blocks of granite—a few paces

from its entrance the furious Restonica, chafing itself to madness among

huge fragments of rock; all around, crag above crag, and dense forest. A

wall of uncemented stones formed an enclosure round the entrance of the

grotto. A fire was burning in the cave, round which cowered the shepherd

family. A miserable-looking woman seemed to be engaged in mending some

article of dress; beside her a fever-sick boy lay wrapped in a brown

blanket of goat's wool, from which his pale face and glittering eyes

looked out inquiringly.

The herdsman had come out of his cave, and hospitably invited me

to alight, and refresh myself with new milk and cheese. I willingly

accepted his invitation, and proceeded to inspect the interior of this

singular cavernous abode. The grotto, I found, ran a considerable way

into the mountain, affording room for a flock of two hundred goats and

sheep, which the herdsman every evening brings in to milk. It was so

exactly the cave of Polyphemus, that it almost seemed Homer must have

taken his description from it. Every item of the description was here,

even the rows of dishes full of milk, and more than a hundred flat round

cheeses arranged on fresh leaves. Only Polyphemus himself was wanting;

for mine host, however robber-like and wild he might look in his shaggy

habiliments, was hospitality itself.

"Do the bandits ever pay you a visit?" I asked the Troglodyte.

"Sometimes they do," said the man; "when they're hungry. You see the

stone here on which I sit?—two years ago a couple of bandit-hunters

concealed themselves in my cave; they were after Serafin. But Serafin

stole in upon them through the night, and with two stabs he made them

both cold upon this stone; then he went his way again into the hills."

My guide hinted that it was time to go. I thanked the herdsman for his

refreshment, and rode off, not without a shudder.

The path, which now took us through the Restonica to the other bank,

became constantly steeper and more difficult. At last, after a ride

of two hours, I reached, thoroughly damp with mist, and during a

magnificent thunderstorm, the last of the pasturing-stations on the

lower heights of Rotondo. Its name is Co di Mozzo.

I had heard a great deal about the shielings of Monte Rotondo; and the

pictures of them my imagination drew were original enough, slightly

idyllic perhaps—little huts in the green pine-forest, or on flowery

Alpine slopes, with all proper pastoral adjuncts. But now, as I rode up

in the midst of thunder and lightning, and through a drizzling rain, I

saw nothing but a wild waste of titanic fragments of stone—a confusion

of vast granite blocks clothing the sides of a huge, gray, desolate

cone. A light smoke was rising from among the stones. The gray of the

watery clouds, the pale lightnings, the roll of the thunder, the rushing

of the Restonica, and the deep melancholy of the gray hills, were

irresistibly saddening.

Some storm-battered larches stood on the steepest edge of a naked

ravine, through which the Restonica foamed and tumbled from block to

block. All around, nothing but the dreariest cliffs; and one grand

glimpse into the mist-filled valley out of which I had ascended. My

eye sought long for the huts towards which the guide was pointing. At

length I detected them among the rocks, and advancing, I soon had before

me this most singular of pastoral communities. It consisted of four

dwellings, erected in the most primitive manner conceivable, probably

with less architectural skill than the termites or the beavers expend

on their houses.

Each of these huts consists of four stone walls, built without mortar.

They are about three feet in height, and support a sloping roof of

sooty stems of trees and boards, on which heavy stones are laid to keep

them in their places. An aperture in the front wall serves as door and

principal chimney; but the smoke issues through the roof and the walls

wherever it finds a chink. An enclosure of stones surrounds a narrow

space before the hut, and within this space, dishes of various kinds

stand; also, in one corner of it rises the _palo_—a rude stake with

projecting pegs, on which hang pots and kettles, clothes, and strips of

goat's flesh.

Some shaggy dogs sprang out as I rode up, and forthwith the men, women,

and children crept from their huts, and curiously eyed the stranger.

They looked picturesque enough in the midst of the stony waste; the

_pelone_, their shaggy, brown mantle flung about them, the red _baretto_

on their heads, and their bronzed features looking out from their dark

bushy beards.

I called to them: "Friends, bestow your hospitality on a stranger who

has come over the sea to visit the herdsmen of Co di Mozzo!"

In friendly tones they returned: "Evviva!" and "Benvenuto!"

"Come into my hut," said one, "and dry yourself at the fire; it is

warm in there." I immediately twisted myself through the door, curious

to see the interior of such a habitation. I found myself in a dark

chamber, about fourteen feet in length and ten in breadth—wholly without

furniture, not a stool, not a table, nothing but the black naked ground,

the black, naked stone walls, and such a smoke of pine-wood as, I

thought, it must be impossible to live in. Close by the wall a huge log

was burning, and a kettle hung above it.

Angelo, my host, spread a blanket which I had brought with me on the

floor, and gave me the place of honour, as near the fire as possible.

Soon the whole family had cowered about it—Angelo's wife, three little

girls, my host, myself, and my guide. The hut was full. Meanwhile,

Angelo threw some pieces of goat's flesh into the kettle, and Santa his

wife brought cheese and milk. Our table equipage was as original and

pastoral as you choose; it consisted simply of a board laid upon the

ground, on which Santa placed a wooden bowl of milk, a cheese, and some

bread. "Eat," said she, "and think that you are with poor herd-people;

you shall have trouts for supper, for my son has gone a-fishing."

"Fetch the broccio," said the shepherd; "it is the best we have, and you

will like it." I was curious to see what the broccio was; I had heard it

praised in Corte as the greatest dainty of the island, and the flower of

all the hill-products. Santa brought a sort of round covered basket, set

it before me, and opened it. Within lay the broccio, white as snow. It

is a kind of sweet, curdled, goats' milk; and eaten with rum and sugar,

it certainly is a dainty. The poor herdsmen sell a broccio-cake in the

city for one or two francs.

With our wooden spoons we wrought away valiantly at the broccio—only

the wife and children did not share. Crouching thus on the ground at

the fire, in the narrow, smoke-filled hut, wild and curious faces all

about me, the wooden spoon in my hand, I began humorously to celebrate

the life of the shepherds among the hills, who are contented with what

their flocks yield them, and know not the wretchedness of _mine_ and

_thine_, nor the golden cares of palaces.

But the honest _pastore_ shook his head, and said: "_Vita povera, vita

miserabile!_"—a poor life, a miserable life!

And so it really is: these men lead a wretched life. For four

months of the year—May, June, July, and August—they burrow in these

cabins, destitute of everything that makes life human. In _their_

world occur no changes but those of the elements—the storm, the

clouds, the thunder-shower, the hail, the heat; in the evening, a

robber-story by the fire, a melancholy song, a _lamento_ to the pipe,

a hunting-adventure with the muffro or the fox; high above them and

around them the giant pyramids of the hoary Rotondo, and the starry

magnificence of the sky; in their breast, perhaps, despite the _vita

povera_, an uncomplaining, serene, pious, honest human heart.

With the dawn of day these poor people rise from the hard ground—on

which they have been sleeping in their clothes, and without other

covering—and drive their herds to the pastures; there they consume their

scanty meal, of cheese, bread, and milk. The old people, who remain at

home, lie in the hut by the fire, occupied with some simple household

work. In the evening, the flocks return and are milked; light falls,

and it is time to go to sleep again.

The snow and rains of September drive the herdsmen from their mountain

cabins. They descend with their flocks to the coast and the paese,

where they have usually more habitable dwellings, in which frequently

the wives and children stay all summer. My hostess Santa was the only

female in the pastoral community of Co di Mozzo, which consists of

six families. "Why," I asked her, "did you come up from the paese to

this gloomy hut?" "Look you," put in Angelo, "she came up to refresh

herself." I was on the point of laughing outright, for the smoke in the

hovel was bringing tears to my eyes, and the atmosphere was infernal.

So, after all, I was to view the wretched heap of stones as a summer

villa, to which the family had retired to refresh itself! "Yes," said

Angelo, as he caught my sceptical look; "below, it is warm; and up

here, we have the mountain wind, and the clear stream, fresh and cold

as ice. We live as the merciful God grants." I began to have respect

for Angelo and his philosophy. His speech was serious and laconic; and

he was taciturn, as it becomes a philosopher to be.

Angelo was owner of sixty head of goats, and fifty sheep. The quantity

of milk drawn from these is inconsiderable. In summer it is barely

sufficient to support the family. The broccio and the cheese, sold

below, furnish bread, and the coarsest clothing. Winter is a hard time,

for the milk goes to feed the kids and lambs. Many a shepherd, however,

has a flock of some hundreds. When the sons and daughters have to be

portioned, it is a fortunate thing if the luck of the patriarchs can

be had, so that the flocks multiply. The dowry of a shepherd's girl

consists in twelve goats if she is poor; if she is wealthy it ranges

higher, according to her parents' means.

The weather had cleared up. I stepped out of the cabin, and drew long

breaths of the fresh air. The shepherds sat here and there on the

stones, smoking their little wooden pipes. They are in the habit of

choosing the oldest, or the most respected of their number, to preside

in the community, and arbitrate in all disputes. This circumstance,

which I discovered accidentally, surprised me; for it allowed me,

in this little democracy of shepherds, a glance into the primitive

condition of human society, and the beginnings of political life. It

seems six men cannot live together without regulating their society, and

developing laws. I greeted the little stumpy podestà most reverently;

and as I contemplated him in silence, I thought him more venerable than

Dejoces, the first and wisest of all the kings of the Medes.

Near the cabins I remarked smaller covered huts of stone, of a round or

of an oblong form. These were the storehouses. Angelo opened a little

door in his, and creeping in, beckoned me to follow; I contented myself

with peeping in. I saw the flat cheeses lying on green twigs, and white

balls of goats'-milk butter in little baskets.

I sat down on a stone, and commenced sketching the cabins. The whole

community came round me, and looked on with expressions of the liveliest

delight. Every one now wanted to have his portrait taken, in order that

it might afterwards be "printed" in Paris, as they said. They would

have it that I was from Paris; and I could not make it intelligible to

them, that besides Paris, there was another country called Germania.

"Germania, then," said my host, "is your paese; and this paese has

kings, and it belongs to Paris." There the matter had to rest.

The afternoon sun shone warmly, and tempted me into the hills. I took

the children with me—Antonio, a boy of thirteen, shaggy as a bear; Paola

Maria, and Fiordalisa. Fiordalisa means Lily-flower. Let the reader

picture to himself this Lily-flower of Monte Rotondo: she has seen

twelve summers; her dress is considerably tattered, her dark hair hangs

wild about her brown face, her eyes are clear and keen as a falcon's,

her teeth are white as ivory, and she climbs the rocks barefoot with

the agility of a chamois. We botanized along the Restonica. I espied

some beautiful red pinks on a ledge that I could hardly have reached,

and I pointed to them. "Aspettate! wait!" cried the Lily-flower; and

she was off like lightning up the cliff, and presently she was down

again with a handful of the pinks. The children now emulated each other

in climbing and dancing on the perilous crags like so many elves; fear

seemed a thing quite unknown to these little mountain-sprites. As we

were crossing the Restonica on our return home, Lily-flower sprang into

the stream, and took the wild fancy of splashing me with water, which

she did most unsparingly. I found the red foxglove growing in great

abundance in these hills—my little elves brought it me in armfuls;

and when we got home, we encircled the smoking hut with a garland of

the poisonous beauties—a decoration that it had probably never before

met with. This was to be a holiday token on the cabin that a guest

was there, since with good men it is always festival when their house

shelters a guest.

Lily-flower's delight in the garland was unbounded. "To-morrow," she

said, "when you are up on the hill, you will find a blue flower—the most

beautiful flower in all Corsica."

"If you say it, Fiordalisa, then it must be true, and to-morrow I shall

find the blue wonder-flower."[L]

Evening came on in the great, silent wilderness. Weary with my day's

fatigues, I sat down before the cabins, and contemplated the changeful

play of the clouds. Mists ascended from the ravines, and, attracted or

repelled by the mountains, rolled themselves together in the valleys,

or dispersed, and were lost among the clouds trailing slowly from above

along the hill-tops. The flocks and herds were coming in. I saw with

pleasure the long lines of the graceful black goats, and the black

sheep, to which the poor shepherds owe their subsistence. Each herdsman

drove, or drew them by a peculiar clear call, into an enclosure beside

his cabin, and there milked them. This operation is managed with

astonishing rapidity: the herdsman sits in the centre of the herd, and

catches one goat after another by the hind legs. He calls every animal

by its name; he knows each exactly. The mark of ownership is generally

on the ear. Forty head of goats, belonging to my host, yielded only a

single moderate pailful of milk.

The herds remain within the enclosure during the night. The shaggy dogs

protect them, not from the wolf, which is not found in Corsica, but from

the fox, which is remarkably bold and powerful among the hills, and

attacks the lambs. My host's Rosso and Mustaccio were two magnificent

dogs.

Meantime the eldest son had returned with a number of beautiful trouts,

and Angelo busied himself with supper. I noticed that it was always the

man who cooked, and not his wife. Was this in honour of his guest? For

the position of woman in general in Corsica is low and menial. As I was

thinking of this, it occurred to me that in Homer the men perform all

similar operations—put the meat on the spit, roast it, and bring it to

the table; so that I had living and acting before me, the man of the

epic and primitive epoch of culture. In Corsica are to be found the men

of Homer and the men of Plutarch.

We had a bread-soup, cheese and milk, and, in honour of the guest,

roasted goat's flesh. For this classic goat-herd took the flesh from the

_palo_, and, after the fashion of ancient times, stuck it on a spit,

and, kneeling, held it over the glowing fire. Carefully, from time

to time, a piece of bread was pressed upon the dripping fat, that the

precious juice of the sweet loin-pieces might not be lost. He cooked

the trouts in a broth of goat's flesh; and when they were ready, he set

them before me, and ladled me forth from the mighty ladle as much as

heart could desire. I saw it in the children's eyes, that this was no

ordinary meal; and it would have refreshed me still more admirably, had

they been allowed to share it.

It was night in the cabin. I was puzzled to imagine how our sleeping

was to be arranged within the narrow limits. But that was soon managed.

My blanket was spread for me on the ground, and I stretched myself on

it, beside the innermost wall; I was at a loss, however, for something

on which to rest my head. I looked at Angelo. "Divine and wise Angelo,"

I said, "give ear. I have never, I swear to you, been a Sybarite, yet

am I accustomed to pillows. Could not your hospitality provide me with

some such convenience?" Angelo pondered; then he handed me his zaïno or

shepherd's bag of goatskin, and spoke the winged words—"Now sleep, and

_felicissima notte_!"

Gradually the others laid themselves down, wife and children, on

the naked earth, leaning their heads on the wall. Angelo lay nearest

the threshold; beside him the youngest child Maria; then Santa his

wife, Lily-flower, Paola Maria, and myself. So we all lay peaceably

together, our feet turned towards the fire. It was not long till

they were all asleep, and I lay contemplating with satisfaction this

happily slumbering family of Gymnosophists, and mused on the words of

the wise Sancho, when he praised the inventor of sleep, "the mantle

that covers all human care, the food that appeases hunger, the water

that extinguishes thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that

alleviates the heat—in short, the universal money for which all things

may be bought, the beam and scale that equalizes king and shepherd."

The fire shed a red glow over the singular group. I lamented that I

was not a painter. But the intolerable heat and smoke of the pitch-pine

would not let me sleep. I rose from time to time and stepped over the

sleepers into the free air. I may say this was stepping from hell into

heaven—for I walked straight into a cloud that had descended on the

hill, and enveloped the cabins.

The night was chill and moist; but the clouds passed off, and the

infinite sky threw its myriad lights on the mists, on the craggy

heights, and the dark larches. I sat long beside the rushing Restonica,

whose tumultuous din broke the impressive silence of the still, pure

night. The spirit of solitude had never come so near me as it did that

night among the black crags, at the brink of a headlong brook, far up

among the clouds and mists, face to face with primitive nature, lost

in a foreign island girt with many a mile of sea. In such moments,

the feeling of loneliness becomes oppressive, and the sudden thought

alarms the soul, that the human being is but an insignificant atom;

and that perhaps this spiritual atom may in an instant lose and forget

its connexion with all related to it, and remain lonely in void space.

But the soul is not thus to be overcome; it spreads its wings for the

distant home, there regains its serenity, and loneliness has fled. I

listen to sounds that seem to be borne to me from the hills; they sound

sometimes like wild laughter—it is the mad Restonica that is so unquiet.

These stones are the dumb witnesses to ancient, dreadful birth-pangs,

offspring of the fieriest embraces of Uranus and Gaea.

The cold air drove me again to the fire. Overcome with fatigue, I at

last fell asleep, when I was suddenly awakened by the clear voice of

Santa, who cried several times, _Spettacoli divini! spettacoli divini!_

She was putting the children to rights; they had flung themselves

about into all sorts of comic positions. Divine spectacles they were

certainly. Lily-flower lay rolled up like a snake half over her mother;

Paola had thrown her arm about my neck. The child had perhaps heard an

owl in her sleep, or seen the vampire in a dream, that comes to suck

the heart's-blood.

I spent the rest of the night sitting looking into the fire, and amused

myself with imaginary representations of the heretics whom the Holy

Catholic Church has burned to the honour of God. Now this is quite an

endless amusement.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOUNTAIN-TOP.

The day was dawning. I went out and refreshed myself in the waves of the

sleepless Restonica, which sprang young and fresh from rock to rock, and

hastened down into the valley. The young stream has a beautiful life.

After a merry career of twelve hours through ever-green woods, it dies

in the waters of the Tavignano. The Restonica gained my affections. I

know the whole story of its life; for I have accompanied it in a single

day, from its first leap to the end of its course; and many a glorious

draught did it afford me. Its water is as clear, as fresh, and as light

as ether; and is renowned far and wide throughout the land of Corsica.

I never drank better water; it was more grateful than the noblest wine.

There is such a keen quality in this incomparable stream, that it cleans

iron to the purity of a mirror in the shortest time, and preserves it

from rust; Boswell mentions that the Corsicans of Paoli's time laid

their rusty gun-barrels in the Restonica to clean them. It makes all the

stones and gravel that it washes milk-white; and its channel and banks

glitter with such stones down to its confluence with the Tavignano.

On asking my guide to ascend with me now to the summit of Rotondo, he

confessed that he did not know the road. Angelo, therefore, became

my guide. We began the ascent between three and four o'clock in the

morning. It was less dangerous but infinitely more fatiguing than I had

supposed.

A number of ridges that rise one above the other, have to be surmounted

before we reach Trigione, from which the ascent of the highest peak

commences. These successive heights form a mighty scala—a stair piled by

the hand of Nature—of colossal steps of primeval reddish granite; huge

Titans, storming heaven with rocks in their giant hands, might be fit

to stride them. Block lies here over block, vast and formless as chaos,

and towering upwards and upwards in such endless masses of monotonous

gray, that the heart almost quails, and the foot refuses to go farther.

The rains of autumn have, in many places, given the granite such a

remarkable smoothness, that it presents large surfaces with all the

polish of a mirror. The water was running in a thousand little channels,

in exhaustless abundance. Tree vegetation, however, here ceases, and

only alder-bushes mark where the young Restonica is collecting its

waters.

In two hours we had climbed Trigione, and the white snow-covered summit

lay before us. Its steep and jagged cliffs form an incomplete circle

(hence the name Rotondo—round), partly hollowed out, like a crater; and

where this huge wild amphitheatre of rocks opens, lies a little dark

lake, the Lago di Monte Rotondo, encircled by gentle green slopes; an

ice-cold draught in a giant beaker of granite. Snow-fields rise from the

lake to the summit—a strange sight, and producing a peculiar impression,

in the hottest dog-days, under a southern sky and the 42d degree of

latitude. They were covered with a crust of ice, and perceptibly cooled

the air near them. But though I was in the region of eternal snow,

I found the temperature pleasantly cool and bracing, and by no means

uncomfortably low.

The summit appeared to the eye near enough, yet it took us two full

hours' climbing, often on our hands and feet, over the shattered

fragments of rock, before we reached it. The most difficult part of

it was the ascent over a strip of snow, on which we could not keep our

footing. We succeeded, however, by dint of hammering steps in the icy

crust with sharp stones, in making cautious progress. At length, much

exhausted, we reached the extreme peak, a torn and rugged obelisk of

gray rock ending in a slender pinnacle, clinging to which one manages

to support himself on the giddy and somewhat perilous height.

From this highest point of Corsica, then, 9000 feet (exactly 2764

metres) above the sea level, I saw the greater part of the island,

and the sea far below washing its coast on both sides—a sight of

inexpressible grandeur, once to have enjoyed which may justly be to any

man a life-long source of pleasant thought. The horizon which the eye

can take in from Rotondo is much grander and more beautiful than that

afforded by Mont Blanc. The view ranges far over the island itself into

the glittering distances of the sea, over the Tuscan islands to the

mainland of Italy, which in clear weather shows the white Alps of the

northern lakes, and the entire bend of the coast from Nice to Rome. On

the other side rise the mountains of Toulon, and the wondrous panorama

thus includes within its magic circle, mountains, seas, islands, the

Alps, the Apennines, and Sardinia. I was not so fortunate as to have the

prospect presented to me in its entire magnificence, for the clouds that

rolled themselves unceasingly up from the ravines, and the exhalations,

deprived me of part of the distance. To the north I saw the peninsula

of Cape Corso stretching itself into the sea like a dagger; to the east

the level coast country descending in easy lines, the islands of the

Tuscan sea, and Tuscany itself; to the west the Gulfs of Prato, Sagone,

Ajaccio, and Valinco. Ajaccio showed itself very distinctly on its

tongue of land in the beautiful bay—a row of little white houses, that

looked like swans swimming in the sea. The sea itself seemed an ocean

of light.

Southwards the broad-breasted Monte d'Oro shuts out the view of the

island. A great many peaks, little lower than Rotondo, and, like

it, crowned with glittering snow, were visible on every hand, as the

finely-formed Cinto, and Cape Bianco towards the north—the highest

summits of the district of Niolo.

From such a comprehensive point of view the island itself shows like

an enormous skeleton of rocks. Monte Rotondo does not lie within the

main mountain-chain which traverses the island from north to south—it

belongs to a subsidiary range running towards the east; nevertheless

from its summit the spectator commands the entire gigantic net-work of

cells that forms the mountain-system of the island. He sees the main

chain close before him, and from this backbone the ribs running out on

each side in parallel ranges, with valleys between, which are inhabited

and cultivated. Each of these valleys is traversed by a stream, while

from the principal range run also the three largest rivers of the

island—towards the east coast, the Golo and Tavignano; towards the west,

the Liamone.

Glancing from the summit of Rotondo on the scene in the immediate

vicinity, the eye is startled and affrighted at these vast and desolate

wastes of rock, and the giant ruins of shattered crag and cliff lying

around. Huge blocks are tumbled about here in a wild chaos, like

monuments of the struggle of the spirits of the elements with the light

of heaven. Frightfully steep walls of rock form a net-work of dreary

valleys. In the centre of most of them lies a little motionless lake,

blue, gray, or deep black, according as it receives light from the

sky or shadow from the cliffs. I counted several such lakes not far

off, Rinoso, Mello, Nielluccio, Pozzolo, from which brooks run to the

Restonica, and Oriente, the principal fountain-head of the Restonica

itself. Farther to the north-west I had before me the famous pastoral

highlands of Niolo, the most elevated basin of the island, with its

black lake Nino, from which the Tavignano flows.

These diminutive lakes are all of great depth, and swarming with trout.

As you stand on the summit you hear a continual sound of rushing waters;

part of them are forcing their way under ground. This rigid, blasted

wilderness, we perceive, overflows with living fountains, which descend

to bless the valleys, and there make culture and human society possible;

far down on the lower declivities of these mountains the eye catches

here and there a paese and green gardens, and patches of yellow field.

Clouds began to gather round the peak; we had to descend. Returning,

we took the difficult route by the Lago di Pozzolo. In this direction

rises, black and jagged, the colossal Frate, the mightiest granite

pyramid of Rotondo. Chaotic debris covers its huge base, which sinks

into the dreary glen of the Pozzolo. That blue wonder-flower, which

Fiordalisa had said I should find, was growing in the crevices of

the rocks. Angelo had plucked one, and cried to me: _Ecco, ecco la

fiore?_—see, see the flower! I took it from his hand; it was our

Forget-me-not. On the summit of Rotondo itself, I saw camomile, the

amaranth, and the ranunculus, growing in abundance, and our own violets

graced the very edge of the snow-fields.

It was with great difficulty that we succeeded in scrambling over the

stones of Frate, and a strip of snow threatened at last to block up the

way altogether. The goat-herd proposed making a _détour_ to avoid it,

but as a North-Prussian I was not inclined so readily to succumb, and

could not resist the temptation of a capital slide. I accordingly placed

myself on Angelo's pelone, and made the descent. I had thus the pleasure

of a little sledging-trip beneath the summer glow of an Italian sun,

and under the 45th degree of latitude.

We breakfasted at the foot of another cone, and, refreshed with

some bread, and a draught from a neighbouring brook, pursued our way

downwards. I looked round in vain for the wild animals that haunt the

rocks of Monte Rotondo—the Muffro namely, or wild sheep—and the bandits.

Although Angelo assured me there were plenty of them in the clefts and

ravines that we passed, I could discover none. The only wild creature

I saw on these heights was the pretty mountain-finch of Monte Rotondo—a

bird with gray body, and red, white, and black wings.

The Corsican wild sheep, the Muffro or Mufflone, is one of the most

remarkable products of the island. It is a beautiful, strong-limbed

animal, with spiral horns, and silky hair of a brownish-black. It

inhabits the highest regions of eternal snow, mounting constantly higher

as the summer sun melts the snow from the hills. By day it frequents

the shores of the lakes, where it finds pasturage; at night it retires

again to the snow. The muffro sleeps on the snow, and the female drops

its young on the snow. Like the chamois, the muffro posts sentinels

while feeding. Sometimes, in severe winters, when deep snow covers their

pasture-grounds, these wild sheep appear in herds among the tame goats,

and they are frequently to be seen in the valleys of Vivario, Niolo, and

Guagno, feeding peaceably among the flocks of the shepherds. The young

animal may be tamed, the old not. They are frequently hunted, and when

shots are heard echoing from rock to rock up among the hills, people

know that men are stalking the muffro or the bandit. Both are lawful

game, brothers of the mountain-fastnesses, and both climb to the eternal

snow.

After a descent of three hours we reached the cabins, and the foul

atmosphere of these wretched hovels contrasted so disagreeably with the

pure ether I had been breathing, that I did not rest more than an hour

till I had the mule saddled, and put myself on the road for Corte. I

bade the good people of Co di Mozzo a hearty farewell, and wished that

their flocks might increase and multiply like the flocks of Jacob. They

accompanied me to the gate of the enclosure; and as I rode away, men

and children saluted me with an honest burst of _evvivas_.

A ride of some hours brought me once more to the region of chestnuts

and citrons, and I had thus, in one day, from the heights of perpetual

snow to the gardens of Corte, travelled through three distinct zones of

climate, which was like journeying from the arctic winter of Norway to

the countries of southern Europe.

CHAPTER V.

VENDETTA OR NOT?

I was not destined to leave the quiet Corte without some slightly

unpleasant recollections, and that owing to my guide of Monte Rotondo.

It was not till after I had returned to the town that I learned to what

a furious and passionate individual I had trusted myself. Although he

had told me a falsehood, and, proving to be unacquainted with the road

to the summit, had compelled me to take the goat-herd Angelo as guide,

I gave him the full hire we had agreed on. But the fellow, in the most

impudent way, demanded half as much again. The vehement language on both

sides drew the notice of some Corsican gentlemen, who took my part.

"This is a stranger," said one of them to the guide, "and with us the

stranger is always in the right." I replied to the polite speaker, "that

I claimed my rights not as a stranger, but as a man, and that I should

instantly have recourse to the authorities of the town, if the rascal

continued to molest me." The latter threw his wages on the table, and

stormed out of the room, exclaiming that he should know how to have

his revenge on the German. On this the landlady of the locanda came to

me and bade me be on my guard, as the fellow was passionate beyond all

bounds, and last year had stabbed a man in the market-place.

Somewhat anxious, I asked the reason. "Because," said the landlady,

"the Lucchese had struck his little brother for hanging on to his cart,

as children do. The boy ran with his complaint to his brother, who

instantly rushed out with his dagger, and murdered the other with one

blow."

"How was he punished?" "With five months' imprisonment; for somehow or

other the murder could not be properly proved." "Now, I confess—_la

giustizia Corsa è un poco corta_—your Corsican justice is a little

short; but, my good woman, you knew the ungovernable temper of this

man—you knew he had already shed blood, and yet you yourself engaged

me this devil for a guide, and allowed an unarmed stranger to enter the

hills with him!"

"I thought, sir, you would see it in his eyes, and I gave you a wink

once or twice, too. The fellow had offered himself, and if I had been

the reason of your sending him away, then _I_ should have got myself

into trouble."

I now remembered that the good woman had asked me as I was going off

with the guide: "When do you expect to return?" and that when I said,

"In two days," she shrugged her shoulders, and seemed to intimate

something with her eyes.

"Very well," I said to the woman, "I shall not give the man a single

quattrino more than was agreed on. On that my mind is made up."

He came in the evening and took away quietly enough the money I

had thrown down. But although this looked like an admission of his

misconduct, I thought it best to maintain a sharp look-out, and did not

go beyond the gates after night-fall.

The following evening I took a walk in the company of a Corsican officer

whose acquaintance I had made. Outside the gate I witnessed a slight

specimen of Corsican temperament. A youth of about fifteen had tied a

horse to a fence, and was throwing stones at it, quite beside himself

with rage, and howling out his fury like some maddened beast. The poor

animal had probably offended him by a fit of obstinacy. I stood looking

at him, and provoked at such malignant brutality, at last called to him

to cease. Instantly my companion said to me: "For Heaven's sake come

away, and be quiet." I obeyed, not a little struck with the scene, and

the suppressed tones in which my companion had addressed me. This, too,

was a glimpse of the state of Corsican society.

Shortly after, the youth flew past on the horse like a demon, his hair

streaming, his face on flame, his eyes still sparkling with fury.

I felt deeply at that moment that I was among barbarians, and a sudden

longing for Florence and its mild Italians filled me.

But there was still another disagreeable little incident in store for

me. We had not gone a mile further into the hills, when I saw my guide

walking along a height a little distance from the road, his gun upon

his shoulder. He sat down on a rock, resting his piece across his knee.

I did not know whether he still bore me a grudge, and meant mischief,

but it was possible. I pointed him out to my companion, and continued

my walk past him, not choosing to show any signs of fear; but I felt

uncomfortable. "He will not shoot at you," said the officer, "unless

you have offended him by some injurious word. But if you have done that,

no saying what may happen; these men will stand no insult." He did not

shoot, for which I was obliged to the bloodthirsty vampire, or the poor

devil, let me rather call him—for nature sins here more than man. The

blood that is shed among the Corsican hills is seldom shed from such a

despicable motive as lust of gold—almost always from false notions of

honour. The Corsican Vendetta is a chivalrous duel for life and death.

CHAPTER VI.

FROM CORTE TO AJACCIO.

Travelling from Corte to Ajaccio, you keep ascending for several

leagues till you reach Monte d'Oro; the road leads southwards through

a beautiful and well-cultivated undulating region, full of magnificent

chestnut-groves. Nothing can be more cheerful than the landscapes of the

canton of Serraggio, formerly the pieve of Venaco. Brooks which descend

from Monte Rotondo water here a lovely green country, on whose eminences

little hamlets stand, as Pietro, Casa Nova, Riventosa, and Poggio.

Poggio di Venaco preserves the memory of the handsome Arrigo Colonna,

who was Count of Corsica in the tenth century. As the traveller wanders

onwards, he lights every now and then on romantic old traditions, which

keep his imagination busy, and form great part of his pleasure. Arrigo

was so beautiful in person, and courteous and graceful in manner, that

he was called the Bel-Messere; and by this name he still lives in the

mouths of the people. His wife, too, was a beautiful and noble woman,

and his seven children were all fair and young. But his foes were

resolved to rob him of his authority, and a fierce Sardinian conspired

with them against his life. One day, the assassins fell upon him and

stabbed him, and they took his seven children and threw them all into

the lake "of the seven bowls." When this wicked deed had been done, a

voice was heard in the air, which wailed and cried, "Bel-Messere is

dead! Luckless Corsica, hope for no happiness more!" All the people

raised a lament for Bel-Messere; but his wife took shield and spear,

and hastened at the head of her vassals to the castle of Tralavedo, to

which the murderers had retired, and she burned down the castle, and put

all the murderers to the sword. Still many a night on the green hills

of Venaco nine ghosts may be seen wandering about; these are the ghosts

of Bel-Messere, his wife, and the seven poor children.

It was Sunday. The people were walking about in the villages, or,

oftener, they were to be seen, like their fathers in times long gone by,

sitting round the church;—a beautiful picture in the Sabbath stillness,

men peacefully keeping the holiday of God's rest. But even on Sunday,

and before the church-door, there comes a sudden musket-shot sometimes,

and then the scene changes.

In the neighbourhood of Vivario the country becomes wilder, and the

eminences more considerable. Many a passer-by stops a while at the

threshold of the little church of Vivario, and looks at a gravestone

there. A verse of the Bible in Latin is engraved on it—_Maledictus qui

percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis populus amen_—Cursed be

he that smiteth his neighbour secretly, and all the people shall say,

Amen. The stone tells a Vendetta story of the seventeenth century; under

it the avenger of blood lies buried. Blessed be the memory of the priest

of Vivario, who took this curse from the Bible and engraved it upon the

stone. They say it is the talisman of Vivario, for the last Vendetta

of the village is thereon inscribed. Would that the hand that wrote it

had been the hand of a giant, and had written in giant letters over all

Corsica—_Maledictus qui percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis

populus amen!_

In a lonely and desolate part of the mountains of Vivario stands a

little blockhouse, with a garrison of ten men. The large valley of

the Tavignano ends here, and a range of heights forms the water-shed

between it and the Gravone, which flows in the opposite direction,

towards Ajaccio. On the boundary line between the two valleys stand the

two snow-capped mountains, Monte Renoso and Monte d'Oro, which latter

attains an elevation only a few metres less than that of Rotondo, and

surpasses it in grandeur of form. For many hours the traveller has this

mountain constantly before his eye.

The road passes between the two mountains, through the glorious forest

of Vizzavona. It consists mainly of larches, which are frequently 120

feet in height, and twenty-one in thickness. Of all the fir species this

mighty, broad-branched, fragrant larch is probably the finest, next to

the cedar; and as I have no acquaintance with the cedars of Asia I may

say that the Corsican larch is the most imposing tree I ever beheld.

To see it in its silent, gloomy majesty on the mighty granite rocks of

these hills was always a high enjoyment for me. It well befits this

imperial tree to stand on granite. It towers high above the cliffs,

which its roots victoriously pierce; and on many spots, known only to

the eagle and the wild sheep, it rises in solitary majesty. There are

magnificent specimens of various other kinds of firs in the forest, red

beeches, and evergreen oaks (_ilex_). It shelters abundance of game,

particularly deer, which are in Corsica of no great size; the wild swine

frequent the regions nearer the coast, where they are eagerly hunted.

The forest of Vizzavona is, next to that of Aitone in the canton of

Evisa, the largest in Corsica. All these forests are in the mountainous

districts. Some belong to the state, most of them to the communes.

Nothing, comparatively speaking, has yet been made of them. I observed

a snake sunning itself by the wayside. Corsica has only two species of

snakes, and no poisonous animals except a spider called Malmignatto—the

bite of which produces a sudden chill all over the body, and sometimes

death—and the venomous ant Innafantato.

It was about noon when I passed through the forest. There was a

suffocating heat in the atmosphere, but the wood offered its cool

springs. Everywhere they trickle down the rocks to swell the waters of

the Gravone; their water is cold and pleasant. Seneca can never have

tasted the Corsican mountain streams, else he would not have said in

his epigram that Corsica could not afford a draught of water.

At length I reached the ridge of the hills, at the highest point on

the road to Ajaccio, 3500 feet above the level of the sea. This is the

Foce, or Pass of Vizzavona, frequently mentioned in the Corsican popular

songs.

The road now descends into the valley of Gravone. Two chains of

mountains confine this fruitful valley. The northern, running out from

Monte d'Oro, ends above Ajaccio in the Punta della Parata. It separates

the basin of the Gravone from that of the Liamone. The southern runs out

in a parallel direction from Monte Renoso, and separates the valleys

of the Gravone and the Prunelli. On both sides of the Gravone stand

villages on the hills. They have a more cheerful appearance than any I

have ever seen in Corsica.

The first village we enter in this canton is Bocognano, which lies

near the mouth of the wild gorge of Vizzavona. On every side rise

dark, wooded hills with snowy summits; the whole region is of a stern,

impressive character. They are herdsmen that dwell here—poor men, but

stout in heart and strong in arm. They live on milk, or on chestnuts.

Many manufacture the pelone. Every one goes armed in this district. The

sight of these powerful men, with their double-barrels and carchera, and

in the brown woollen blouse, accords well with the gloomy Alpine heights

and the pine-forests all around. These Corsican highlanders look as if

they were made of iron, like the fusils which they carry. The people

here seemed to be still sticking fast in all the rust and rudeness of

the Middle Ages.

The road continues to descend towards Ajaccio. At length we descried

the magnificent gulf. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when

we gained the neighbourhood of the city. The richer cultivation of

the heights, vineyards, and olive-orchards, and the fertile plain of

Campoloro, announced the vicinity of the capital of Corsica. It showed

itself as a row of white houses stretching into the gulf, at the foot of

a range of hills, and surrounded by villas. Through the avenue of elms,

which leads along the gulf into the town, I now, with joyous emotion,

entered the little native city of the man who convulsed the world.

FOOTNOTE:

[L] An allusion to the blue flower in the _Henrich von Ofterdingen_

of Novalis—_Tr._

BOOK VIII.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

AJACCIO.

Ajaccio lies at the northern end of one of the most magnificent gulfs in

the world. The lines of its two opposite coasts are of unequal length.

The northern is the shorter; it runs out in a westerly direction to

the Punta della Parata, off which lie the Isole Sanguinarie, or Bloody

Islands. The southern side of the gulf stretches from north to south

in a long and very irregular line to Cape Muro, on rounding which you

enter the Bay of Valinco.

No villages are seen on the northern shore; on the southern but few,

with here and there a solitary tower or a lighthouse. Lofty hills rise

over the northern end of the beautiful gulf; at their base lies the

valley of the Gravone, ending towards the sea in the fertile plain of

Campo di Loro. The situation of Ajaccio has an astonishing resemblance

to that of Naples.

It is said that Ajaccio is one of the oldest cities in Corsica.

According to the fable of some chroniclers, it derives its name from

the Telamonian Ajax; according to others, it was founded by Agazzo,

the son of the Trojan prince Corso, who wandered with Æneas into the

western Mediterranean, carried off Sica, the niece of Dido, and thus

gave the island the name of Corsica. Ptolemy places the ancient city

of Urcinium on the Gulf of Ajaccio, supposed to be the Adjacium of the

earliest period of the Middle Ages, a town which is always mentioned

along with the oldest in the island—with Aleria, Mariana, Nebium, and

Sagona, cities which now no longer exist.

The ancient Ajaccio, however, did not occupy the site of the present

town; it lay on an eminence farther to the north. The hill is called San

Giovanni; on its summit lie the ruins of an old castle, named _Castello

Vecchio_, and there formerly lay near them the remains of an ancient

cathedral, in which it was customary for the bishops of Ajaccio to

be consecrated, long after it had fallen into decay. These ruins have

vanished; nothing now betrays the former existence of a city on this

spot. But many ancient Roman coins have been found in the vineyards;

also oval-shaped sarcophagi of terracotta, always containing a skeleton

and a key. It is said that the vaulted tombs of the Moorish kings were

also formerly shown here; but they have disappeared.

The new town and the citadel were founded by the Bank of St. George

of Genoa in the year 1492. It was the residence of a lieutenant of the

Governor of Bastia, and did not become the capital of the island till

the year 1811, when it was elevated to its new dignity at the instance

of Madame Letitia and Cardinal Fesch, who wished in this way to give

distinction to their own and the Emperor's birthplace.

The best view of the town and its environs is from the hill of San

Giovanni. It presents one of the prettiest pictures that can be

imagined, and is equalled by no other city in Corsica. The distance is

incomparable. Cloud-topped hills stretching far into the interior, the

majestic gulf in azure splendour, an Italian vegetation and a southern

sky—no finer combination could be thought of; and here in the midst

of it lies a quite idyllic, silent, innocent little town of 11,500

inhabitants, concealed among the verdure of its elms, the mistress of a

region which seems intended to be the environment of one of the capitals

of the world.

Ajaccio lies on a tongue of land, the extremity of which is occupied

by the castle. Portions of the town stretch on each side of this tongue

along the gulf. The avenue of elms and planes which leads into the city

is continued along its main street—the Cours Napoleon, which is properly

the prolongation of the road from Corte. Part of it has had to be

blasted through the rocks, two of which still stand at the entrance of

the town, close to the houses. In the Corso itself the elms give place

to orange-trees of considerable size, which give the street a rich and

festive look. The houses are high, but destitute of architectural merit.

The gray jalousies are characteristic; this is the colour preferred in

Corsica, while in Italy they are usually of a lively green. The gray

gives to the buildings a dead, monotonous air. All the more considerable

edifices of the Corso stand on the right side; the little Theatre, the

Prefecture—a handsome building—and the military barracks.

The rural quiet pervading these streets of Ajaccio surprised me; but

their names speak loudly to the traveller, and relate the history

of Napoleon. You read Cours Napoleon, Rue Napoleon, Rue Fesch, Rue

Cardinal, Place Letitia, and Rue du Roi de Rome, which last awakens

mournful recollections. The memory of Napoleon is the proper soul

of the town, and you saunter onwards, out of one little street into

another, musing on the wonderful man and his childhood, and soon you

have wandered through them all. The Rue Fesch runs parallel with the

Cours Napoleon; the former leads to the spacious Place du Diamant,

which lies on the shore, and has beautiful view of the gulf and its

southern coast; the latter ends in the market-place (_du marché_), and

leads to the harbour. These are the two principal streets and squares

of Ajaccio. Narrow lanes connect them, and intersect the whole of the

tongue of land. The silence invites memory and thought, and silently the

mirror of the blue gulf stretches away before the view. You see it from

almost every street. The eye is nowhere imprisoned by walls, for the

main streets are wide, the squares spacious, planted with green trees;

and the sea, and green olive-clad hills, which rise close upon the city,

look in upon you wherever you go or stand. Ajaccio is at once an inland

and a coast town—you live there in the heart of Nature.

In the cool of the evening, the Corso and Diamond Place grew livelier.

The military band began to play in the Place; the people gathered here

and there in groups, or moved about. Most of the women wore black veils,

those of the middle classes were enveloped in the black faldetta. It

was easy to imagine you were in some city of Spain.

The Ajaccians have the finest promenades in the world, whether they

choose the beautiful esplanade which has so romantic a name, or the

walks along the gulf among alleys of elms, and through vineyards and

olive-gardens. I know few promenades from which so fine a view is to

be had as that from the quiet Place du Diamant in Ajaccio. Immediately

in front of it the murmuring sea; towards the land cheerful rows of

houses; among them, a stately military hospital and a handsome Catholic

College; close over these houses a green hill. A stone breastwork runs

along the side next the gulf; a few steps bring you to the strand, which

is fringed by an alley of trees.

I found nothing in Ajaccio more pleasant than to wander about on the

Place du Diamant in the evening, when the west wind blew fresh over

the gulf, or to sit on the breastwork, and feast my eyes on the magic

panorama of sea and hills. The sky of Italy is then lit up with a

brilliance as of fairy-land; the air is so clear that the Milky Way

and the planet Venus throw long lines of radiance across the gulf, and

the waves reflect a mild splendour. Where they are in motion, or are

furrowed by a passing skiff, they tremble with phosphorescent sparks.

Above, the shore wraps itself in night; the beacons gleam from the

headlands, and on the hills you see in many places great fires blazing.

They are burning copsewood there—a practice common in the month of

August, in order to gain land for tillage, which is at the same time

manured by the ashes. These fires continue to burn for days. During the

day they roll white clouds of smoke over the hills, at night they glare

over the gulf like volcanoes, and then the resemblance to the Gulf of

Naples becomes striking. A magnificent illumination may thus be enjoyed

every evening on the Diamond Place of Ajaccio.

The market-place is no less beautiful, though it affords a less

comprehensive view. You see from it the safe and beautiful harbour,

confined by a granite mole erected by Napoleon. On the side of the

harbour, a beautiful quay of granite bounds the market-place, which,

planted with trees, has a look of rural peace. At its entrance stands

the principal fountain in Ajaccio, a large cube of marble, from the

sides of which the water gushes into semi-circular basins. It is

thronged from morning till night with women and children drawing water;

and I could never look on these groups without being reminded of Old

Testament scenes of the same character. In warm countries, the wells are

the very fountains of poetry and sociable intercourse; well and hearth

are the time-honoured centres round which human society has always

gathered.—The women here do not draw their water in the antique vessels

of metal used in Bastia, but in cask-shaped pitchers of terracotta, the

handles of which lie across the mouths. These pitchers are also ancient;

and another kind of earthenware pitcher, common in Ajaccio, with a long

slender neck, has a thoroughly Etruscan look. The poor inhabitants of

the barren island of Capraja support themselves partly by making these

vessels, which are sent to great distances.

On the same market-place, behind the fountain, close upon the harbour

and before the handsome town-house, stands a marble statue of Napoleon,

on an excessively high and disagreeably tapering pedestal of granite.

The inscription is as follows: "His native city to the Emperor Napoleon,

on the 5th May 1850, the second year of the presidency of Louis

Napoleon." Ajaccio had long been endeavouring to raise a monument to

Napoleon, and always in vain. The arrival of a statue in Corsica was

therefore an event of no small importance for the island. It chanced

that the Bonaparte family on one occasion sent Signor Ramolino the

statue of a Ganymede. The people seeing it as it was taken out of the

vessel, took the eagle of Ganymede for the imperial eagle, and Ganymede

himself for Napoleon; they assembled in the market-place, and demanded

that the statue should forthwith be placed on the above-mentioned

fountain, that they might at last have the great Napoleon in marble

in the market-place. The worthy Corsicans, in thus turning the Trojan

youth Ganymede into their countryman Napoleon, certainly seem to give

some colour to the old fable of the chroniclers, that the Ajaccians are

descended from a Trojan prince.

The beautiful statue of Napoleon, by the Florentine Bartolini, was

originally intended for Ajaccio; but a disagreement arose about the

price (60,000 francs), and Bartolini's work never became one of the

ornaments of Ajaccio. The statue of Napoleon in the market-place is

by Laboureur, and is only of mediocre merit; but its position, in full

view of the gulf, gives it an admirable local effect. It is a consular

statue. The consul looks from the pedestal upon the sea, turning from

his little native town to the world-embracing element. He wears the

Roman toga, and on his head a wreath of bays; his right hand grasps

a rudder, which rests upon a ball representing the globe. The idea

is happy; for in sight of the gulf the rudder appears a quite natural

symbol, and is doubly significant in the hand of an islander. The mind

of the beholder dwells here not on the history of the complete, but

of the incipient ruler; for he sees around him the little world of

Ajaccio, in which the mightiest European man went about as child and

youth, unconscious who he was, and for what fate had destined him. Then

the memory wanders from the market-place to the gulf, and sees the ship

anchor there, which bore the General Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt to

France. During the night he sat on board that vessel, eagerly reading

such newspapers as could be procured for him in Ajaccio; and it was here

that he formed the resolution to seize that rudder with which he was

to rule not France alone, but an empire and a hemisphere, till it broke

in his hand, and the man of Corsica went to wreck on the island of St.

Helena.

Very few vessels, some luggers, and one or two schooners, lie in the

harbour. Not, like the Bay of San Fiorenzo, exposed to the maestrale,

or north-west wind, but protected by its shores from every storm, this

magnificent gulf is capable of sheltering in its roads the largest

fleets. But the port is completely dull, and destitute of trade. Once

a week, on Saturday, comes a steamer from Marseilles, and brings news

of the world, and supplies of necessary articles. I have often heard

Corsicans complain that the native city of Napoleon, though possessing

the advantages of an incomparable situation, and an excellent climate,

was nothing more than an ordinary little provincial town of France. You

only need to walk round the market-place, where most of the shops are,

on the ground-floors of the houses, to see how slow the sale of goods

is, and how limited the native industry. You do not see a single shop

where articles of luxury are sold—nothing but the most indispensable

handicrafts, such as shoemaking and tailoring; and the wares that look

most like to articles of luxury, seem old-fashioned and spoiled.

I found only one book-shop in Ajaccio: it was kept by a dealer in small

wares, who sold soap, cordage, knives, and baskets as well as books.

The town-house, however, contains, for Ajaccio, a highly considerable

library, of 27,000 volumes. It was founded by Lucian Bonaparte, and the

opinion is, that he has done greater service to his country in connexion

with this library, than by his epic in twelve cantos: _La Cyrneïde_.

The prefecture also possesses a valuable library, which is particularly

rich in archives and important documents of Corsican history.

In the town-house is also preserved the collection of pictures which

Cardinal Fesch bequeathed to his native city. It consists of 1000

paintings. The poor citizens of Ajaccio have no proper museum in which

to hang these; they have consequently lain for years in a lumber-room.

Fesch also proposed to make his house an institution for the Jesuits;

latterly he made it a college, which now bears his name. It has a

principal, and twelve teachers for various branches of science and

literature.

Ajaccio is very poor in public institutions and public buildings. Its

most important edifice is the house of the Bonapartes.

CHAPTER II.

THE CASA BONAPARTE.

The narrow street of St. Charles issues upon a little square. An elm

stands there before an oldish three-storied house, the plaster of

which has been coloured a yellowish-gray; it has a flat roof, and a

balustrade above it, a front of six windows in breadth, and doors that

look greatly decayed. On the corner of this house you read the words:

"_Place Letitia_."

No marble tablet tells the stranger who has come from Italy, where the

houses of great men always bear inscriptions, that he stands before

the house of the Bonapartes. He knocks in vain at the door; no voice

answers, and all the windows are closely veiled with gray jalousies, as

if the house were in a state of siege from the Vendetta. Not a human

being is stirring upon the square; a deathlike stillness rests upon

the neighbourhood, as if the name of Napoleon had frightened it into

silence, or scared all else away.

At length an old man appeared at the window of a house close by, and

requested me to return in two hours, when he should be able to give me

the key.

Bonaparte's house, which has, I am assured, sustained but slight

alteration, though no palace, has plainly been the dwelling of a

patrician family. Its appearance shows this, and it is without doubt a

palace compared with the village-cabin in which Pasquale Paoli was born.

It is roomy, handsome, and convenient. But the rooms are destitute of

furniture; the tapestries alone have been left on the walls, and they

are decayed. The floor, which, as is usual in Corsica, is laid out

in small hexagonal red flags, is here and there ruinous. The darkness

produced in the rooms by the closed jalousies, and their emptiness, made

them quite dismal.

Once, in the time of the beautiful Letitia, this house was alive

with the busy stir of a numerous family, and brilliant with joyous

hospitality. Now, it is like a tomb, and in vain you look around you for

a single object on which fancy may hang associations with the history

of its enigmatic inhabitants. The naked walls can tell no tale.

I do not know when the Casa Bonaparte was erected, but it can hardly

be very old. It was built, no doubt, when the Genoese were supreme in

the island, perhaps when Louis Quatorze was filling the world with his

own fame, and with the fame of France. I thought of the time when the

master of the craftsmen who erected it pronounced over the house, on

its completion, the customary blessing, and when, according to ancient

usage, the family for whom it had been built was solemnly conducted into

it by an assemblage of kinsfolk—all alike unconscious that the whim of

fortune would one day shower upon its roof the crowns of kingdoms and

of empires, and that it was yet to cradle the race of princes who were

to share among them the thrones of a continent.

The excited fancy seeks them in these rooms, and sees them assembled

round their mother, children in no respect differing from ordinary

children—boys who toil over their Plutarch and their Cæsar,

schoolmastered by their grave father, or their granduncle Lucian, and

three young sisters who grow up thoughtlessly, and rather wild, like

their playmates, in the half-barbarous island-town. There is Joseph,

the eldest, and there Napoleon, the second son, with Lucian, Louis, and

Jerome; there Caroline, Eliza, and Paulina, the children of a notary

of moderate income, who is constantly and to no purpose carrying on

lawsuits with the Jesuits of Ajaccio about a contested property, of

which, with his large family, he stands in great need. For it is a

matter of much anxiety to him, how his children are to be provided

for. How will they prosper in the world? and in what way secure for

themselves a respectable livelihood?

And lo! these same children one day put forth their hands, one after

another, and grasp the mightiest crowns of the earth, tear them from

the heads of the most unapproachable majesties of Europe, wear them

before all the world, are embraced as brothers and brothers-in-law by

emperors and kings, while great nations fall submissive at their feet,

and abandon to the sons of the notary of Ajaccio their country, their

wealth, and their blood. Napoleon is European Emperor, Joseph king

of Spain, Louis king of Holland, Jerome king of Westphalia, Paulina a

princess of Italy, Eliza a princess of Italy, Caroline queen of Naples.

In this little house were so many crowned potentates born and brought

up; their mother a woman whose name the world had never heard, daughter

of a citizen of a small, obscure, provincial town, Letitia Ramolino, who

married at the age of fourteen a man as little known to fame as herself.

It may be said with truth, that in her labours this mother travailed

with the world's history.

There is no fable in all the Arabian Nights apparently more fabulous

than the story of the Bonaparte family. That this romance has, however,

realized itself in the quiet, sober days of our modern era, must be

regarded as a great fact in history, and as a piece of great good

fortune. The history of humanity, clogged with political precedent,

and paralysed by bureaus and red tape, has thereby been shaken with

earthquake force into fresh activity, and flushed with a new life, and

man has been shown to be stronger than a supposed political necessity.

Human power and human passion have been freed from the spell under

which the traditional limitations of rank had bound them, and it has

been proved that the individual, though born among the dust, may become

anything and everything, because men are equal. That the history of the

Bonapartes should appear fabulous is the fault of the mediæval tinge

that still attaches to our ideas of life, and of the received notions

as to the impassable barriers interposed by social difference. Napoleon

is the political Faust. His historical greatness does not lie in his

battles, but in his revolutionary nature. He overthrew the political

gods of tradition. The history of this predestined man is therefore very

simple, human, and natural, but it cannot yet be written.

History, too, is Nature. There is a chain of causes and effects, and

what we call genius, or a great man, is always the necessary result of

definite conditions.

More than a thousand years of almost uninterrupted conflict between

Corsica and her oppressors preceded the birth of the great conqueror

Napoleon, in whose nature this rock-bound island, and this insular

people, steeled in conflict, and forcibly thrown back upon itself by the

narrow space to which it was confined, created for themselves an organ

whose law was—illimitedness. The ascending series was this: the Corsican

bandit, the Corsican soldier, Renuccio della Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori,

Pasquale Paoli, Napoleon.

I entered a little room with blue tapestry, and two windows, one of

which, with a balcony before it, looked into a court, the other into

the street. You see here a wall-press, behind a tapestried door, and

a fireplace with a mantelpiece of yellow marble ornamented with some

mythological reliefs. In this room, on the 15th of August 1769, Napoleon

was born. It is a strange feeling, hard to put in language, which

takes possession of the soul on the spot hallowed as the birthplace

of a great man. Something sacred, mystic, a consecrated atmosphere,

pervades it. It is as if you were casting a glance behind the curtain

of Nature, where she creates in silence the incomprehensible organs of

her action. But man discerns only the phenomenal, he attempts in vain

to ascertain the _how_. To stand in silence before the unsearchable

mysteries of Nature, and see with wonder the radiant forms that ascend

from the darkness—that is human religion. For the thoughtful man nothing

is more deeply impressive than the starry sky of night, or the starry

sky of history. I saw other rooms, the ballroom of the family, Madame

Letitia's room, Napoleon's little room where he slept, and that in

which he studied. The two little wall-presses are still to be seen there

in which his school-books stood. Books stand in them at present. With

eager curiosity I took out some of them, as if they were Napoleon's;

they were yellow with age—law-books, theological treatises, a Livy,

a Guicciardini, and others, probably the property of the Pietra Santa

family, who are related to the Bonapartes, and to whom their house in

Ajaccio now belongs.

It is well to review in connexion with this house the early history of

Napoleon, about which our information is still insufficient. I shall

relate what I know of it by hearsay or reading. I am largely indebted

to the lately published work of the Corsican Nasica—_Mémoires sur

l'Enfance et la Jeunesse de Napoléon jusqu'à l'age de vingt-trois ans_.

It is dedicated to the uncle's nephew, and is written without talent

or insight, but contains facts which are undoubtedly correct, and some

valuable documents.

CHAPTER III.

THE BONAPARTE FAMILY.

The origin of the Bonaparte family can no longer be precisely

ascertained. Low flattery has availed itself of the most ridiculous

means to procure Napoleon ancient and dignified ancestors. A pedigree

has even been constructed beginning with Emanuel II., the eighth Greek

emperor of the house of the Comneni, whose two sons are said to have

emigrated under the name of Bonaparte after the fall of Constantinople,

first to Corfu, then to Naples, Rome, and Florence. From them, as this

ridiculous fiction will have it, the Corsican Bonapartes are descended.

It has been historically proved that the Bonapartes figured among the

seigniors of the Italian cities during the Middle Ages. The Bonapartes

were inscribed in the Golden Book of Bologna, among the Patricians of

Florence, and in the book of the nobility of Treviso. When Napoleon

became son-in-law of Austria, the Emperor Francis ordered active

researches to be made as to the position occupied by the Bonaparte

family in Italy during the Middle Ages; and sent his son-in-law some

documents purporting to prove that the Bonapartes had been for a long

period the lords of Treviso. Napoleon expressed himself as obliged, but

replied that he found himself sufficiently honoured in being the Rudolph

of Hapsburg of his race. On another occasion he declined the ancient

patents of nobility which were being palmed on him, with the words: "I

date my nobility from Millesimo and Montenotte."

It is quite uncertain when the Bonapartes came to Corsica.

Muratori quotes a document of the year 947, in which three Corsican

seigniors—Otho, Domenico, and Guido—gift their estate of Venaco in

Corsica to Silverio, Abbot of the cloister of Monte Cristo; a Messer

Bonaparte signing the instrument in Mariana, along with other witnesses.

The family, or rather a branch of it, would therefore seem to have

come to Corsica at an early period. Others, perhaps, followed in later

centuries, for the Tuscan Bonapartes were partly Guelphs and partly

Ghibellines, and were alternately expatriated with the one or the

other faction. It is known that some of them removed to Sarzana, in

the district of Lunigiana, where they entered into the service of the

powerful Malaspinas, with whom, as I am disposed to believe, they came

over to Corsica. Another branch remained in Tuscany, establishing itself

there permanently—first in Florence, and afterwards in the little town

of San Miniato al Tedesco, which lies upon the road to Pisa. The family

had its tomb in the Church of San Spirito at Florence; and I saw there,

in the piazza of the convent, a stone with the inscription, in antique

lettering—

S. di Benedeto

Di Piero di Giovanni

Buonaparte. E di sua Descendenti.

The coat of arms above the inscription bears two stars, one in its upper

and one in its lower division, significantly enough—for the star has

twice ascended over the house of Bonaparte.

Members of his family were still living in San Miniato in the time of

Napoleon. After his expedition from Leghorn, he found in the little

town the last of that branch of the Bonapartes, in the person of an old

canon, Filippo Bonaparte, who made the young hero his heir, and died in

the year 1799.

As regards the Bonapartes of Ajaccio, they can be traced with certainty

as far back as Messire Francesco Bonaparte, who died in the year 1567.

Without doubt, the Corsican branch of the family came over from Sarzana.

The following little table gives Napoleon's ancestry so far as it is

known with certainty:—

Francesco Bonaparte, 1567.

|

Gabriele Bonaparte Messire,

Built towers in Ajaccio against the Saracens.

|

Geronimo Bonaparte Egregius, _procurator nobilis_,

Head of the Senators of Ajaccio.

|

Francesco Bonaparte,

Capitano of the Town.

|

+——————————————+————————————+

| |

Sebastiano Bonaparte. Fulvio Bonaparte.

| |

Carlo Bonaparte, _nobilis_. Ludovico Bonaparte, 1632,

| Married Maria of Gondi.

|

Giuseppe Bonaparte.

Senator of the Town.

|

+————————————————————————————————————+

| |

Sebastian Bonaparte, _magnificus_. Luciano Bonaparte,

Senator of the Town, 1760. Archidiaconus.

|

Carlo Maria Bonaparte,

Born 29th March 1746, Father of Napoleon,

married Letitia

Ramolino.

The Bonapartes played no part in Corsican history. Influential in their

own city, and honoured with titles of nobility by the Genoese, to whom

Ajaccio was subject, they confined themselves to a share in the civic

administration of the town. It is not till Carlo Bonaparte that the name

acquires consideration throughout the whole of Corsica, and becomes to

a certain extent historic.

Napoleon's father was born, as we have seen, on the 29th of March 1746,

at Ajaccio, in a stormy time, when the Corsicans were mustering all

their force to shake off the detested yoke of Genoa. Gaffori was then

the leader of the Corsicans, and Pasquale still in banishment at Naples.

It had become customary with the Bonapartes of Ajaccio, to send their

children to complete their education in Tuscany, and particularly to

let them study in Pisa. For the Bonapartes remembered their Florentine

nobility, and never ceased to assert it. Carlo Bonaparte himself, called

himself Nobile and Patrician of Florence. The young Carlo studied first

at Paoli's newly founded University in Corte; and then went to Pisa,

where many of his countrymen were his fellow-students. He studied

jurisprudence; and it is said of him, that his talents and learning

procured him respect, and his generosity attachment. Returning to his

native country after graduating as Doctor of Laws, he soon became the

most popular advocate in Ajaccio.

Carlo Bonaparte, with his prepossessing exterior, powerful intellect,

and fervid eloquence, was not long in attracting the attention of

Paoli, whose perception of character was acute. He began to employ

him in business of state. In the year 1764, the young advocate became

acquainted with the most beautiful girl in Ajaccio, Letitia Ramolino,

at that time fourteen years of age. Both were warmly attached to each

other; but the Ramolinos belonged to the Genoese party, and would not

consent to their daughter's marriage with a Paolist. Paoli himself,

however, interfered, gained the good-will of the parents, and obtained

their permission. Letitia's mother had, as widow, married a Signor

Fesch, captain of a Swiss regiment in the service of Genoa; Cardinal

Fesch was their son.

Paoli, meanwhile, made the young Carlo Bonaparte his secretary, and

took him with him to Corte, the seat of government. Letitia followed

unwillingly. Corsican liberty was on the eve of its extinction;

the French had already entered the island, after the treaty of

Fontainebleau; and in the critical position of affairs, a parliament had

assembled to decide upon the course to be followed. Carlo Bonaparte, in

a fiery, patriotic speech, demanded war against France.

After the defeat at Ponte Nuovo, when the flight had become universal,

and the French were already in the vicinity of Corte, some hundreds

of families of the higher classes sought refuge on Monte Rotondo, and

among them Carlo Bonaparte and his wife, who was then pregnant with

Napoleon. The mountain presented a mournful spectacle of despairing,

defenceless fugitives, of terrified women and children, who believed

that their last hour was come. Several days of anguish and uncertainty

passed in these rocky wilds among the goat-herds. At length French

officers appeared on the mountain with a flag of truce, sent by Count

Devaux, who had occupied Corte. They announced to the fugitives that

the island had been conquered, that Paoli was about to leave it, and

that they had nothing to fear, but might descend from the mountain to

their homes. The fugitives immediately sent a deputation to Corte, at

the head of which were Carlo Bonaparte and Lorenzo Giubega of Calvi, to

obtain passes providing for the safety of all their families, furnished

with which the deputation returned to Monte Rotondo, and brought their

friends away.

Bonaparte descended with his wife into the little pastoral district of

Niolo, taking this difficult route for Ajaccio. They had to pass the

river Liamone, which was swollen, and Letitia was in danger of being

drowned. Only her own courage and the activity of her attendants rescued

her from the stream. Carlo Bonaparte now purposed to accompany Paoli,

his patron and friend, into exile, holding it dishonourable to remain in

Corsica now that the common fatherland had fallen under the yoke of the

French. But the entreaties of his uncle, the Archdeacon Lucian, and the

tears of his wife, induced him to relinquish this despairing thought. He

remained on the island, returned to Ajaccio, and there, under the French

government, became assessor in the Supreme Court. Marbœuf showed him

many marks of distinction; and it was through his influence that Carlo

procured for his eldest son Joseph a place in the seminary of Autun;

and for his second son Napoleon, a cadetship in the military school

of Brienne. It was Marbœuf, therefore, the conqueror of Corsica, who

made the career of the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, possible. He

was a frequent visitor at the house of the Bonapartes, and spent many

agreeable hours in the society of the beautiful Madame Letitia; this,

and the patronage which the French Count bestowed on Napoleon, gave

occasion to the scandalous reports circulated by the enemies of the

latter, that the gallant Frenchman had enjoyed the favours of Napoleon's

handsome mother.

Marbœuf was himself, however, under obligation to Carlo Bonaparte. For

when General Narbonne-Fritzlar was intriguing in Corsica against his

countryman, in order to obtain the command of the island, Bonaparte had

by his courage and energy prevailed with the French ministry to retain

Marbœuf as governor. The count repaid this service with his friendship,

his good offices, and the recommendation of the young military scholar

Napoleon, to the influential family of Brienne. Carlo Bonaparte showed

his attachment to Marbœuf in every possible way; I have read a sonnet

of his addressed to the count, which I shall not communicate, as it

contains nothing characteristic;—any cultivated Italian can write a

tolerable sonnet in his native language.

In the year 1777, Napoleon's father was made deputy of the nobility

for Corsica, and travelled to Paris by way of Florence. He visited the

French capital a second time, in order to bring to a conclusion his

process with the Jesuits of Ajaccio in regard to certain properties.

While prosecuting this business he died, in February 1785, in his

thirty-ninth year, of the same malady in the stomach, which was to

prove fatal to his son Napoleon. The incoherent dreams of his deathbed

ran always upon Napoleon—a proof that he centred his hopes upon this

son; he cried, dying: "Where is Napoleon; why does he not come with his

great sword to help his father?" He died in the arms of his son Joseph.

They buried him in Montpellier. When Napoleon had become Emperor, the

citizens of this town offered to erect a monument to his father. But

Napoleon replied to their proposal, that they should allow the dead to

rest; for if a statue were raised to his father, now so long dead, his

grandfather, and his great-grandfather, might with equal justice demand

a similar honour. Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, afterwards had his

father's body disinterred and deposited in St. Leu.

Napoleon was at school in Paris, when Carlo Bonaparte died. The

following is the letter which the youth of sixteen wrote to his mother

on the occasion:—

"PARIS, _March 29, 1785_.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,—Time has to-day somewhat calmed the first outbreak

of my sorrow; and I hasten to convince you of the gratitude with

which your constant kindness to us has inspired me. Console

yourself, my dear mother. Circumstances demand it. We shall

redouble our care and our grateful attention, and shall be happy

if we can in any degree compensate to you by our obedience, for

the incalculable loss of a beloved husband. I conclude, my dear

mother—my grief compels me; while, at the same time, I beg you

to moderate your own. My health is excellent, and I pray Heaven

every day that yours may be equally good. Give my respects to aunt

Gertrude, Minana Saveria, Minana Fesch, &c.

"_P.S._—The queen of France was confined of a prince, named the

Duke of Normandy, on the 27th of March, at seven o'clock in the

evening.—Your very devoted and affectionate son,

"NAPOLEON DE BONAPARTE."

If this laconic epistle of the young Napoleon is genuine, it is of some

value.

Carlo Bonaparte was a man of brilliant talent and clear intellect,

an impassioned orator, a patriot, and yet, as we have seen, capable

of adapting himself to circumstances, and not wanting in political

prudence. He was fond of splendid living, and his expenditure was

lavish. Madame Letitia was only thirty-five years old at his death, and

had already borne him thirteen children, five of whom were dead. Jerome

was an infant in the cradle.

The Archdeacon Lucian now became the head of the house and proved

himself a careful and frugal steward of the family property. The

Bonapartes owned some lands, some vineyards, and herds.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BOY NAPOLEON.

"I too am a mortal man

Like others, born

Of the race of him who was first made."

_Wisdom of Solomon._

We dwell with singular interest on the childhood of extraordinary men;

the imagination pleases itself with the picture of the boy still lost

among his play-fellows, and unconscious of his destiny. We are tempted

to guess, in the physiognomy of the child, the traits that mark his

future greatness as a man; but childhood is a deep mystery; who shall

distinguish in the soul of a child the form of the genius or the demon

that sleeps therein?—who prophesy of the mysterious power that is

suddenly to determine the vast and slumbering forces, and send them

forth commissioned into space and time?

I once saw in Florence the marble bust of a boy. The innocent smile on

the childish face attracted me, and I contemplated it with pleasure. On

the pedestal was inscribed: NERO.

Little is known of Napoleon's infancy. His mother Letitia was in church

at the festival of the Assunta of the Virgin when she felt the first

pangs of approaching labour. She immediately hastened home; but had

not time to gain her own room, and gave birth to her child in a small

cabinet, on a temporary couch of tapestry representing scenes from the

Iliad. Gertrude, her sister-in-law, attended her. It was eleven o'clock

in the forenoon when Napoleon came to the world.

He was not baptized till the 21st of July 1771, nearly two years after

his birth, along with his sister Maria Anna, who died soon after. It is

said that he resisted vehemently when the priest was about to sprinkle

the consecrated water on him; perhaps he wanted to baptize himself, as

at a later period he crowned himself, taking the crown from the hands

of the Pope when he was about to set it on his head.

His boyhood showed symptoms of a vehement and passionate temperament,

and he was at perpetual variance with his eldest brother Joseph. In

these childish quarrels Joseph had always the worst of it, and was

rudely handled; and when he ran to complain, Napoleon was declared to

be in the right. Joseph became at last quite submissive to his younger

brother, and the family began very early to look upon Napoleon as taking

the lead among his brothers and sisters. The Archdeacon Lucian said to

Joseph on his deathbed, "You are the oldest of the family, but there

stands its head—you must not forget that."

We are willing enough to believe that the boy Napoleon showed a quite

indomitable passion for everything military, and that this born soldier

liked nothing so well as to run by the side of the soldiery of Ajaccio.

The soldiers had a pleasure in seeing the boy go through the exercise

beside them, and many a grayhaired veteran lifted him in his arms and

caressed him for imitating the drill so valiantly. He teased his father

till he purchased him a cannon, and the toy was long shown in the house

of the Bonapartes with which he used to make his mimic battle-thunder,

and play the cloud-compelling Jove. He soon began to exercise empire

over the youth of Ajaccio, and, like Cyrus with the shepherd-boys of the

Medes, and Peter the Great with his play-fellows, he formed the children

of Ajaccio into a regiment of soldiers, who bravely took the field

against the youngsters of the Borgo of Ajaccio, and fought sanguinary

engagements with stones and wooden sabres.

In the year 1778, his father took him to the military school of

Brienne, where the afterwards celebrated Pichegru was his master. It

is known that Napoleon here at first showed himself quiet, gentle,

and diligent. His impassioned temperament broke out only occasionally

when his delicate sense of honour was touched. His quartermaster one

day condemned him for some fault to eat his dinner on his knees in the

woollen dress of disgrace, at the door of the refectory. Such a dinner

was more than the pride of the young Corsican could stomach; he had

an attack of vomiting and a fit. The Père Petrault immediately freed

him from the punishment, and made it matter of complaint that his best

mathematician was treated so shamefully.

In 1783, Napoleon went to the military school of Paris to complete his

studies, already a completely-formed character, highly cultivated,

glowing with the fires of genius and of youth, his head full of the

heroes of his favourite Plutarch, and his heart penetrated with the

deeds of his great Corsican forefathers. Society had already begun to

ferment, and coming great events threw their shadow forward on the time.

It was a period worth living in, heaving with mighty energies, big with

change, and full of creative, Titanic impetuosity; it had given Nature

the command to prepare great men.

The young officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, joined his regiment in Valence

in the year 1785. His soul, profoundly though uncertainly stirred,

needed expression. He wrote on the theme proposed for a prize essay

by the Academy of Lyons: "What are the Principles and the Institutions

which we must give to mankind to make them happy?"—a favourite subject

in that humanistic period. Napoleon wrote anonymously. When he had

become Emperor, and Talleyrand had extracted the paper from among the

archives of Lyons to flatter the potentate, he threw it into the fire.

Sentimentality was one of the features of the age, and we see that the

young philanthropist did not escape without paying tribute to his time.

What if Napoleon should have become the popular author of a sentimental

romance in the vein of Richardson and Sterne? He had undertaken a

journey to Mount Cenis with his friend Demarris, and on his return,

agreeably excited by his little love-affair with Mademoiselle Colombier

of Valence, who gave him secret rendezvous and very innocent banquets

of cherries, he sat down to write a Sentimental Journey on Mount Cenis.

He did not get far with it; but this fit of tender susceptibility in

Napoleon is remarkable—and had he not "The Sorrows of Werther" with him

in Egypt?

Still body and soul a Corsican, he also wrote in Valence a History

of the Corsicans—a theme that suited the young Napoleon well. The

manuscript exists in an incomplete state in the Library at Paris, and

is now about to be published. Napoleon sent his manuscript to Paoli,

whom he admired, and who was at that time living in exile in London.

The following is part of the letter to his great countryman, which

accompanied it:—

"I was born when our country died. Three thousand Frenchmen infesting

our island, the throne of freedom sinking in waves of blood—such was the

detested spectacle that first shocked my gaze. The groans of the dying,

the sighs of the oppressed, the tears of despair, surrounded my cradle

from the moment I was born.

"You left Corsica, and with you vanished the hopes of better fortune;

slavery was the tribute we had to pay to conquest. Under an accumulation

of burdens—under the threefold chain of the soldier, the legislator,

and the tax-gatherer—our countrymen lived on in contempt,... despised

by those who had the reins of government in their hands. Is not this the

most cruel torture that any one possessed of feeling can have to suffer?

"The traitors to their country—the venal souls whom the love of

base hire corrupts—have disseminated calumnies against the national

Government, and against you personally. Authors adopt them, and transmit

them as truths to posterity.

"Reading them, I was fired with indignation, and I have resolved to

dissipate these mischievous falsehoods—the children of ignorance. An

early-commenced study of the French language, attentive observation,

and _memorabilia_ extracted from the papers of the patriots, put me

in a position even to hope for some success.... I shall compare your

Government with the present.... I shall paint the betrayers of the

common cause, with the pencil of shame, in black.... I shall summon

those in power before the bar of public opinion, give the minutest

details of their vexatious system of oppression, disclose their secret

intrigues, and, if possible, interest the virtuous minister who at

present governs the State, for the lamentable fate which keeps us so

cruelly prostrate."

Such are the sentiments and language of the young Corsican, Napoleon—the

revolutionary democrat and scholar of Plutarch. In his History of

the Corsicans, he says in one place: "When his country is no more,

a high-spirited citizen should die." These were, in those days, no

mere phrases from Tacitus; they were the glowing language of a young

soul capable of all that was great and noble. There is hardly another

character whose development—rapid as the flush of youth and genius

can make it—we follow with the same passionate delight as we do that

of the young hero, Napoleon, till about the peace of Campio Formio.

We see a more than ordinary man—a demigod passing before us, still

uncontaminated by the foul touch of selfishness—till the fair picture

gradually becomes blurred, and we class it with those of ordinary

despots. For no greatness endures, and Macchiavelli is right: "There

are none but ordinary men." Other youthful literary attempts of Napoleon

are mentioned by his biographers, and they are now to be printed; among

them two novels, _Le Comte d'Essex_, and _Le Masque Prophête_, and a

dialogue on Love, entitled _Giulio_.

Napoleon visited Ajaccio every year, and made his influence be felt on

the education of his brothers and sisters. They were brought up simply,

after the fashion of their country, and with a primitive strictness. "It

was almost," says Nasica, "as if you were living in a convent. Prayers,

sleep, study, refreshment, pleasure, promenade—everything went by rule

and measure. The greatest harmony, a tender and sincere affection,

prevailed among all the members of the family. It was in those days a

pattern to the town, as it afterwards became its ornament and boast."

The Archdeacon Lucian managed the family affairs economically; and it

cost the young Napoleon great exertion to obtain a little additional

money to meet his expenses. But he obtained it. The whole family felt

the influence of the young man, and was subject to the sway of this

born ruler. It is characteristic—since empire was his destiny—that he,

the second-born, has not only the mastery of his younger brothers and

sisters, but even of his elder brother, and that his interference has a

decisive effect on their upbringing. It was soon quite well understood

that the young Napoleon was to be obeyed.

I find an authentic letter of Napoleon to his uncle Fesch, afterwards

the Cardinal, dated from Brienne, the 15th July 1784. The boy of

fifteen, in writing here as to the career on which his eldest brother

Joseph ought to enter, speaks in the clearest and most sensible way

of the circumstances necessary to be taken into account. The letter

is sufficiently well worth reading—especially if we consider that the

Joseph of whom so many doubts are therein expressed, afterwards became

King of Spain.

NAPOLEON TO HIS UNCLE FESCH.

"MY DEAR UNCLE,—I write to inform you of the journey of my dear father

over Brienne to Paris, where he has gone in order to take Marianne

(afterwards Eliza of Tuscany) to St. Cyr, and to re-establish his

health. He arrived here on the 21st with Lucian, and the two demoiselles

whom you saw: he has left Lucian here. He is nine years old, and three

feet, eleven inches, ten lines high: he is in the sixth in Latin, and

will learn the various branches taught in this school; he shows much

talent and willingness, and we may hope that something will come of him

(_que ce sera un bon sujet_). [Lucian was the only one of the family who

scorned a crown.] He is healthy, he is strong, lively, and thoughtless,

and, in the meantime, his masters are content with him. He knows French

very well, and has completely forgotten his Italian; but he will write

to you along with this, and I shall say nothing to him, that you may

see how matters stand with him.

"I hope he will write to you oftener now, than he did when he was in

Autun.... I am confident my brother Joseph has not written to you yet.

How could you expect it? He sends my dear father, when he does write

to him, at most two lines. He is, in truth, quite changed. He writes

to me, however, frequently. He is in the rhetoric class; and he would

do better if he were diligent, for the master told my dear father that

there was no one in the college (at Autun) who showed more talent than

he in physics, rhetoric, or philosophy, or who could make so good a

translation. In regard to the profession he is to follow, you know he

at first chose the clerical. He kept by this resolution up till the

present hour, but he now wishes to serve the king. In this he is wrong,

on several grounds.

"1. As my father remarks, he has not courage to face the dangers of a

battle; his weak health does not allow of his enduring the fatigues of

a campaign; and my brother looks at the life of a soldier only from the

garrison side. Yes, my dear brother will make an excellent officer in

garrison. Well, as he is light-minded, and therefore clever at making

frivolous compliments, he will always, with his talents, make a good

figure in society—but in a battle? It is about this my dear father is

dubious.

Qu'importe à des guerriers ces frivoles avantages?

Que sont tous ces trésors sans celui du courage?

A ce prix fussiez vous aussi beau qu'Adonis,

Du Dieu même du Pinde eussiez-vous l'éloquence,

Que sont tous ces dons sans celui de la vaillance?

"2. He has received an education for the clerical profession; it is

too late to forget it. The Bishop of Autun would have given him a large

benefice, and he was certain to have become a bishop. What an advantage

for the family! The Bishop of Autun has done all he could to prevail

on him to stay, and has promised him that he never would have cause to

repent it. In vain!—he persists. I commend his resolution, if he has

a decided taste for this profession—the finest of all professions—and

if the Great Mover of human things (_le Grand Moteur des choses

humaines_) had, in forming him, given him, as He has given me, a decided

inclination for a military life.

"3. He wishes to obtain a commission; that is very well, but in what

corps? In the marine, perhaps. 4. He knows nothing of mathematics.

It would take him two years to learn them. 5. The sea does not agree

with his health. Perhaps among the engineers? Then he would require

four or five years to master what is necessary. Moreover, I think that

to work and be occupied the whole day does not suit the levity of his

disposition. The same reason exists for his not joining the artillery as

for the engineers, with the exception that he would only have to work

eighteen months to become _élève_, and as many to be made officer. Oh!

but that is still not his taste. Let us see, then—doubtless he wishes

to join the infantry. Good! I understand; he wants to have nothing to

do the whole day but wear the pavement; but what is an insignificant

infantry officer?—a _mauvais sujet_ for three-fourths of his time. And

neither my father, nor you, nor my mother will hear of this, nor my

uncle the archdeacon, for he has already given some little specimens of

lightheadedness and extravagance. It follows that a last attempt must be

made to gain him for the clerical profession; if this cannot be done, my

dear father will take him with him to Corsica, where he will be under

his own eye. They will try to make a law-clerk of him. I conclude by

begging that you will continue your good-will towards me; to make myself

worthy of it will be my chief and my most agreeable duty. I am, with

the most profound respect, my dear uncle, your very devoted and very

obedient servant and nephew,

"NAPOLEON DE BONAPARTE.

"_P.S._—Tear this letter.

"We may hope, nevertheless, that Joseph, with the talents he possesses,

and the sentiments with which his education must have inspired him, will

think better of it, and become the stay of our family. Represent to him

a little these advantages."

Have we not almost a right to doubt that a boy of fifteen can have

written so self-conscious, so clear and decisive a letter? It has never

hitherto been published anywhere but in the work of Tommaseo—_Letters of

Pasquale Paoli_—where I found it; the author says he owes it to Signor

Lucgi Biadelli, councillor at the Supreme Court of Bastia. The letter

appears to me to be an invaluable document; we seem to be present at

the family council of the Bonapartes, and have all its members vividly

before our eyes. Monsieur Fesch in Ajaccio, when he received the letter

with the news about the giddy Joseph, wore his woollen blouse, and had

his little wooden pipe in his mouth, precisely as many eye-witnesses

remember to have seen him. Later, he wore the cardinal's hat; and the

light-headed young Joseph became king of Spain.

We can recognise, in the Napoleon of this letter, the future tyrant

of his family. We here find him caring for his brothers—pondering over

their prospects; afterwards, he gave them kingly crowns, and demanded

unconditional obedience. The plain citizen Lucian, and Louis King of

Holland, alone withstood his tyranny.

CHAPTER V.

NAPOLEON AS ZEALOUS DEMOCRAT.

When Napoleon came on a visit to Ajaccio, he liked to live and work in

Milelli—a little country-house in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio belonging

to the family—where the old oak-tree may still be seen under which the

stripling Bonaparte used to sit and dream, and anxiously revolve his

plans of life.

The French Revolution came, the storming of the Bastille, the overthrow

of the existing state of things.

The young Napoleon threw himself, with all the force of his impassioned

nature, into the excitement of the time. Destiny, however, did not

mean him to exhaust his energies in the struggle of the revolutionary

parties; it had reserved him for something else. At a distance from

Paris, and on his own little island, he was to play a merely preparatory

part in the first stormy agitations of the new period. Corsica became

his school.

We find him in Ajaccio as a young, enthusiastic revolutionist,

declaiming in the clubs, writing addresses, helping to organize the

national guard—in short, playing the great politician precisely in the

way we are acquainted with from our own experience.

Ajaccio was at that time the centre of the Corsican revolutionists; the

house of the Bonapartes their place of meeting; the two brothers, Joseph

and Napoleon, undisputed leaders of the democracy. The little town was

in a state of wild uproar. The commotion appeared to General Barrin, at

that time in command of the island, of a threatening character; and he

sent Gaffori's son, Marshal Francesco Gaffori, to check it. Gaffori was

by no means successful in this; on the contrary, he was glad to find

hospitality and protection in the house of Bacciocchi, afterwards Prince

of Lucca and Piombino.

Napoleon and Joseph, meanwhile, assembled the democratic party in the

Church of San Francesco, and prepared a congratulatory address to the

Constituent Assembly, which contained at the same time the bitterest

complaints of the oppressive character of the existing administration in

Corsica, and expressed an urgent wish that the island should be declared

an integral part of France.

Napoleon understood his time: renouncing his Corsican patriotism,

he became decidedly French, and threw himself into the arms of the

Revolution.

He returned to Valence in 1789; and soon after he is again in Ajaccio,

where the active Joseph, while the national guard was in the process

of formation, was zealously exerting himself to obtain an officer's

commission. Marius Peraldi, the richest man in Ajaccio, and an enemy of

the Bonaparte family, was made colonel of the national guard, and Joseph

an officer.

It had in the meantime been proposed in Corsica to recall the exiles;

and by the exertions of the two brothers Bonaparte and the Abbot Coti,

the Corsican General Assembly was induced to name four deputies, who

were to meet Paoli in France, and conduct him to the island. Among

these was Marius Peraldi, and both Napoleon and Joseph accompanied the

deputation.

When Paoli arrived in Paris, the Constituent Assembly had already (1st

December 1789) incorporated Corsica with France, by a decree which for

ever put an end to the political independence of the island. Mirabeau

and Saliceti—Corsican deputy for the Third Estate, afterwards the

celebrated statesman, and minister of Murat in Naples—proposed the

resolution.

Napoleon himself hastened to Marseilles to welcome Paoli, and was

witness to the tears of joy which the noble patriot shed when he again

set foot on his native soil in Cape Corso. An assembly met in Orezza

to deliberate on and regulate the affairs of the island. Napoleon and

his foe, the young Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, earned here, at the

elections, the first honours as public speakers. Carlo Bonaparte's son

could not but attract the attention of Paoli, who, astonished at the

exuberance of intellectual resource and unerring judgment of the young

man, is said to have expressed himself with regard to him in these

terms: "This young man has a career before him; he needs nothing but the

opportunity, to be one of Plutarch's men." It is related that Paoli on

one occasion entered a locanda, and finding the rooms in disorder, was

told in explanation by the landlord that a young man, by name Bonaparte,

had been lodging there; had written day and night, and constantly torn

what he wrote to pieces; had run restlessly up and down, and at last

started off for the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo.

The young Napoleon had left no stone unturned to procure his brother

Joseph the presidency of the district of Ajaccio, travelling as an

adroit partisan through the villages of the region, soliciting votes,

and spending money.

In Ajaccio he was indefatigably occupied in keeping the republican

club at the due heat, and thwarting the priests and the aristocrats. A

sanguinary struggle took place between the two parties in the little

town; Napoleon's life was endangered, and an officer of the national

guard was killed by his side. He narrates the details in a manifesto

of his own composition. Blood continued to be shed for several days and

several times the lives of Joseph and Napoleon were a stake.

Napoleon was considered the soul of the club of Ajaccio. Reminding

us of the young politicians of our late popular commotions, we see

him fulminate a stinging address against an aristocrat—Count Matteo

Buttafuoco, the same who had invited Rousseau to Vescovato, and who,

during the Corsican war of independence, had served in the French army,

and lent the enemies of his country his arm against his country's cause.

He was deputy of the nobility for Corsica, had voted in Versailles

against the union of the Estates, and made himself odious by other

votes of aristocratic and unpopular tendency. Against this man the

young Napoleon wrote a manifesto in his country house at Milelli,

which he printed in Dôle, and then sent to the club of Ajaccio. The

pamphlet, rhetorical and impassioned, but substantially based on

fact, is a notable contribution to our acquaintance with Napoleon.

It has all the bold, poetic exuberance of diction characteristic of

young revolutionists; and as I read it in this solitude of Ajaccio, it

awakened in me amusing recollections of the years 1848 and 1849. But it

is more than the mere pamphlet of a young demagogue—it is a preparatory

exercise for the imperial edicts; it is the Emperor himself trying his

wings. This manifesto is indispensable if we are desirous of insight

into the nature and growth of Napoleon in the earlier periods of his

development.

LETTER OF MONSIEUR BONAPARTE TO M. MATTEO BUTTAFUOCO, CORSICAN DEPUTY

TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

"MONSIEUR,—From Bonifazio to Cape Corso, from Ajaccio to Bastia, is

but one chorus of curses upon you. Your friends hide themselves, your

relatives disown you; and even the prudent man, who never allows himself

to be mastered by popular opinion, is this time carried away by the

general indignation.

"What is it you have done, then? What are the crimes that can legitimate

an animosity so universal, and a desertion so complete? This, Monsieur,

is precisely what I am about to investigate, by the aid of light which

you yourself shall supply.

"The history of your life, at least since you were thrown upon the

stage of public affairs, is known. Its main features are drawn here in

characters of blood. There are details, however, not so generally known;

I may therefore make mistakes, but I count upon your indulgence, and on

your correcting them.

"After entering the service of France, you returned to see your

relations; you found the tyrants beaten, the national government

established, and the Corsicans, animated by the most generous

sentiments, emulating each other in making daily sacrifices for the

public weal. You, Monsieur, did not allow yourself to be led astray

by the general ferment; far from it; you listened only with compassion

to the babble of fatherland, freedom, independence, and constitution,

with which the demagogues had been puffing up our meanest peasants.

Profound reflection had taught you to estimate at its proper value

this artificial excitement, which can only be maintained at the

expense of the community. Of course the peasant must labour, and

not act the hero, if he is not to die of hunger, but to bring up his

family, and respect the authorities. As regards the persons who by

their rank or good fortune are called to rule, it is impossible that

they can for any length of time be so stupid as to sacrifice their

ease and their influence to a chimera, and that they should stoop to

pay court to a cobbler, for the sake of playing the Brutus. However,

when you fell upon the project of gaining the friendship of Monsieur

Paoli, it was necessary you should dissemble. Monsieur Paoli was the

centre of all national movement. We will not deny him talent, nor even

genius, of a certain kind; he had for a while made the affairs of

the island flourish; he had founded a university, in which, for the

first time since the creation, perhaps, those sciences which further

the development of the mind were taught among our mountains; he had

increased our means of defence by establishing an iron-foundry and

powder-mills, and by erecting fortifications; he had opened ports which

by encouraging commerce enlivened agriculture; he had created a marine

which favoured our communications, while it was destructive to our

enemies—and all that he had thus begun, was but the indication of what

he would one day have accomplished. Harmony, peace, and freedom were the

forerunners of national prosperity—had it not been, that, as _you_ had

discovered, an ill-organized government, constructed on a false basis,

was the still surer omen of the misfortunes into which the nation was

to be plunged.

"Paoli's dream was to play the Solon, but he copied his model badly. He

had put everything into the hands of the people, or its representatives,

so that one could not exist except at its pleasure. Strange mistake,

to subordinate to a day-labourer, a man who by education, birth, and

fortune, is destined to rule! Such a palpable perversion of reason

cannot fail, in the long-run, to produce the ruin and dissolution of

the body politic, after it has brought it into uproar by every species

of abuse.

"You succeeded according to your wish. Monsieur Paoli, continually

surrounded by hot-headed enthusiasts, did not conceive it possible

that a man could have any other passion than the fanaticism of freedom

and independence. Through certain French introductions, you procured

his intimacy, and he did not take time to test your moral principle by

anything deeper than your words. By his influence you were chosen to

conduct the negotiations in Versailles, in regard to the settlement of

affairs which was effected through the mediation of the French cabinet.

Monsieur de Choiseul saw you and understood you. Men know in an instant

how to estimate souls of a certain stamp. Very soon you transformed

yourself from the representative of a free people into the agent of

a satrap. You communicated to him the instructions, the projects, the

secrets, of the cabinet of Corte.

"This conduct, which people here find base and shameless, I, for

my part, find quite simple; after all, in every sort of affair, the

important point is to have a clear eye and a cool judgment.

"The prude judges the coquette, and thereby makes herself ridiculous;

that is her history in a few words.

"A man of principle would judge you very severely; but you do not

believe in men of principle. The common man, who is constantly misled

by virtuous demagogues, can have no consideration from you, who do not

believe in virtue. Your own principles alone must pronounce sentence

upon you, like the laws upon a criminal; but those who know what supple

policy means, find nothing but the greatest simplicity in your mode of

acting; we come to the same result as before, therefore—in every sort

of affair we must first see clearly, and then judge calmly. As to other

matters, you can defend yourself no less victoriously, for you have not

coveted the reputation of a Cato or Catinat; it is sufficient for you to

resemble a certain class; and, with this class, it is a received dogma,

that he who can have money and does not use it, is a simpleton, since

money procures all the pleasures of the senses, and nothing is of any

value but these pleasures. The liberal Monsieur de Choiseul accordingly

was sufficiently pressing in his offers, whereas your own ridiculous

country, according to its pleasant custom, repaid your services with

the honour of serving it.

"When the treaty of Compiègne had been concluded, Monsieur de Chauvelin

landed with twenty-four battalions on our coasts. Monsieur de Choiseul,

who attached the utmost importance to the speedy accomplishment of the

objects of the expedition, became so uneasy that he could not conceal

his anxiety from you—you advised him to send you here with a few

millions. As Philip took cities with his sumpter-mule, you promised to

overcome every obstacle, and produce complete subjection.... No sooner

said than done; you hastened over the sea, threw off the mask, and, with

money and promotion in your hand, you opened communications with those

whom you considered most accessible.

"The Corsican cabinet had no idea that a Corsican could love himself

more than his country—it had intrusted you with its interests. As

you, on the other hand, had no idea that a man could _not_ love money

and himself more than his country, you sold yourself and hoped to buy

every one else. Profound moralist! you knew the price of each man's

fanaticism. A few pounds of gold more or less, were for you the shades

of difference in character!

"You deceived yourself, however; the weak were perhaps shaken, but

they were shocked at the frightful thought of lacerating the bosom of

their country; they imagined they saw their fathers, their brothers,

or their friends, who had perished in its defence, rising from their

graves to overwhelm them with curses. These ridiculous prejudices were

powerful enough to check you in your career. You sighed that you had to

deal with a childish people; but, Monsieur, such refined sentiments as

yours are not given to the multitude, and they live on in poverty and

wretchedness, while the prudent man, as soon as circumstances become

in any degree favourable to him, knows how to rise. And that is pretty

nearly the moral of your history.

"In giving account of the obstacles which interfered with the fulfilment

of your promises, you proposed that the Royal-Corse regiment should be

sent here. You hoped that its example would convert our too good and too

simple peasantry; that it would accustom them to a thing in which they

found so much that was repulsive—but you were deceived in this hope too.

Did not Rossi, Marengo, and some other fools, excite such an enthusiasm

in this regiment, that the collective officers declared, in an authentic

document, that they would rather send back their commissions than break

their oath, or be unfaithful to still more sacred duties?

"You found yourself compelled to set the example yourself. Not at all

disconcerted, you threw yourself into Vescovato, at the head of some

friends and a detachment of French soldiers; but the terrible Clemens

hunted you from the nest. You retired to Bastia with the companions of

your adventure, and with your family. This little affair did not bring

you much honour; your house, and the houses of your associates, were

burnt down. In your place of security, you mocked at these impotent

exertions of a dying cause.

"It is boldly affirmed here, that you wished to arm the Royal-Corse

against its own brothers. And, in the same spirit, people are inclined

to call your courage in question, on account of your slight defence of

Vescovato. These are useless imputations. For the first is an immediate

consequence, is a means for the execution, of your projects; and as we

have affirmed that your mode of acting has been very simple, it follows

that this incidental accusation is done away with. As regards your want

of courage, I do not see that this is proved by the action of Vescovato;

you did not go there to make war in earnest, but to encourage, by your

example, those of the opposite party who already wavered. And then,

what right had people to demand that you should have risked the fruit

of two years' good behaviour, in order to let yourself be killed like a

common soldier? But you must have been moved when you saw your house,

and the houses of your friends, become the prey of the flames. Good

God! when will silly mortals cease to take everything so seriously?

When you allowed your house to be burnt, you compelled Monsieur de

Choiseul to compensate you. The issue has confirmed the correctness of

your calculations; you have been paid far beyond the value of what you

lost. It is true, complaints have been made that you kept everything for

yourself, and gave only a trifle to the wretched men you had corrupted.

In order to know to what length you were capable of going, we only

require to see how far you could go with safety; now, poor people, who

were so much in need of your protection, were neither in a position to

assert their claims, nor even to see clearly the wrong that was done

them; they dared not exhibit their discontent, and rebel against your

authority; detested by their countrymen, their return would not have

been so much as safe. It is, therefore, natural that when you found a

few thousands of dollars among your fingers, you did not allow them to

slip through; that would have been stupid.

"The French, defeated notwithstanding their gold, their commissions,

the discipline of their numerous battalions, the lightness of their

squadrons, and the skill of their artillery, routed at Penta, at

Vescovato, at Oreto, at San Nicolao, at Borgo, Borbaggio, and Oletta,

retired behind their entrenchments completely discouraged. The winter,

the time of their repose, was for you, Monsieur, a period of the

greatest diligence; and though you could not triumph over the obstinacy

of prejudices deeply-rooted in the minds of the people, you succeeded

in corrupting some of their leaders, whom you robbed of their nobler

sentiments, though with difficulty; and this, and the thirty battalions

that Monsieur de Vaux brought with him in spring, made Corsica bow her

neck to the yoke, and forced Paoli and the most enthusiastic to retire.

"A number of the patriots had fallen in the defence of their

independence, others had fled a proscribed country—now the loathsome

nest of tyranny; but many had neither died nor been able to flee, they

became the objects of persecution. Souls that had proved themselves

superior to corruption were of another stamp. The French supremacy

could only be secured by their complete extinction. Ah! this plan was

but too punctually executed. Some died the victims of supposititious

crimes; others, betrayed by those to whom they had extended their

hospitality and their confidence, expired upon the scaffold, repressing

their tears. Great numbers, immured by Narbonne-Fritzlar in the jail

of Toulon, poisoned by bad food, tortured by their chains, loaded with

every species of misusage, lived for some time in the spasms of the

death-struggle, only to see death slowly approaching.... O God, witness

of their innocence, why hast Thou not made Thyself their avenger?

"In this general misery, in the midst of the cries and groans of this

unhappy people, you began meanwhile to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Honours, titles, pensions rained upon you; your possessions would have

increased still more rapidly if Madame Dubarry, occasioning the fall

of Monsieur de Choiseul, had not deprived you of a protector who knew

how to estimate your services. The blow did not discourage you; you

re-established yourself by your activity in the subordinate bureaus; you

saw nothing in it but the necessity of increasing your diligence. People

in higher quarters found themselves flattered, your services were so

notorious!... Nothing was withheld from you. Not content with the lake

of Biguglia, you requested portions of the lands of several communes.

How could you rob them of these? people ask. I, for my part, ask: What

consideration could you be expected to have for a nation which you knew

detested you?

"Your favourite project was the division of the island among ten barons.

What! not content with helping to forge the chains of your country, you

proposed also to subject it to an absurd feudalism! But I commend you

for doing the Corsicans all the harm that was in your power; you were

at war with them, and in war it is an axiom to do hurt for your own

advantage.

"But passing all this wretched business, let us come to the present, and

conclude a letter, the shocking length of which cannot but have tired

you.

"The posture of affairs in France was ominous of extraordinary events;

you dreaded their effect in Corsica. The same madness with which we

were possessed before the war, began again, to your great annoyance,

to deprive this amiable people of its senses. You saw what would

be the consequence; for, if generous sentiments were to sway public

opinion, from an honest man you became a mere traitor; if these generous

sentiments stirred the blood of our fiery fellow-citizens, something

more wretched still; if a national government followed, what was to

become of you? Your conscience accordingly began to make you uneasy.

Frightened, cast down, you still did not despair; you resolved to

stake your all, but you did it like a man of sense; you took a wife to

strengthen your connexions. A worthy man, who, trusting to your honour,

had given his sister to your nephew, saw himself deceived. Your nephew,

whose paternal inheritance you had devoured to increase a property that

should have been his, found himself with a numerous family plunged into

misery.

"When you had arranged your private affairs, you threw a glance upon the

country. You saw it reeking with the blood of its martyrs, covered with

victims, and everywhere breathing nothing but thoughts of vengeance.

You saw the reckless soldier, the impudent official, the greedy

tax-gatherer, lording it with none to gainsay, while the Corsican,

loaded with the triple chain, did not dare to think either on what he

was, or on what he might yet be. In the joy of your heart you said to

yourself: 'Matters are going on well, the only point is now to preserve

them as they are, and forthwith you banded yourself with the soldier,

the official, and the farmer of the revenue. All your aims were now

centred on obtaining deputies inspired with similar sentiments; for,

as concerned yourself, you could not imagine that a nation hostile

to you would elect you as its representative. But you were destined

to alter this opinion when the writs, with a perhaps intentional

absurdity, ordered that the deputy of the nobility should be elected in

an assembly composed of only twenty-two persons—all that was necessary

was to gain twelve votes. Your associates of the Supreme Council were

exceedingly active; threats, promises, caresses, everything was tried:

you were successful. Your candidates in the communes were not: your

First President was rejected, and two men—in your opinion, of extreme

ideas—the one was son, brother, nephew of the most zealous defenders

of the people's cause; the other had seen Sionville and Narbonne, and,

sighing over his impotence, well remembered the atrocities which he

had witnessed—these two men were proclaimed, and met the wishes of

the nation, whose hope they became. The secret indignation, the rage,

which seized on every one, when you were elected, does honour to your

intrigues, and the influence of your associates.

"On arriving in Versailles, you became a zealous royalist; in Paris

you saw, to your great affliction, that the government which was being

erected on the ruins of the fallen system, was the same which among us

had been drowned in so much blood.

"All the exertions of the despotic party were powerless; the new

constitution, the admiration of Europe, has become an object of

solicitude to every thinking being. There remained for you but one means

of rescue, and that was, to make it be believed that this constitution

was not fitted for our island, although it was precisely the same as

that which had worked so prosperously, and to deprive us of which had

cost so much blood.

"All the deputies of the old administration, entering as a matter of

course into your cabals, served you with the warmth of men seeking

their own interest. You drew up memorials in which you affirmed that

the advantages of the existing government among us were matter of

experience, and in which it was represented that any alteration was

contrary to the wishes of the nation. At this time the town of Ajaccio

got wind of your machinations; she raised her head, formed her National

Guard, organized her committee. This, intervening so unexpectedly,

alarmed you. The excitement spread. You persuaded the minister, of whom

you had the advantage in knowledge of Corsican affairs, that it was

necessary to send your father-in-law, Monsieur Gaffori, to the island,

the worthy forerunner of Monsieur Narbonne; and Monsieur Gaffori,

at the head of his troops, had the impudence to attempt to maintain

by violence the tyranny which his father, of glorious memory, had by

his genius beaten and suppressed. Innumerable blunders disclosed the

mediocre talent of your father-in-law: the only art be possessed was

that of making himself enemies. On every side people were uniting

against him. In this imminent danger you lifted up your eyes and saw

Narbonne. Narbonne, seizing a favourable moment, had formed the plan

of establishing in an island which he had desolated by unheard-of

cruelties, the despotism which tormented his own conscience. You assent:

the plan is adopted, five thousand men receive orders; the decree

directing the provincial regiment to be increased by a battalion, is

despatched; Narbonne himself sets off. This poor nation without arms,

without spirit to resist, is delivered, hopeless and helpless, into the

hands of its executioner.

"O unhappy fellow-citizens, what detestable intrigues were you to be

the victims of! You would not have understood them till it was too late.

Where were your means of withstanding, without arms, ten thousand men?

You yourselves would have signed the act of your degradation, hope would

have fled, hope would have been extinguished, and days of misery would

have succeeded each other without intermission. Liberated France would

have looked on you with contempt, afflicted Italy with indignation, and

Europe, astonished at a humiliation so profound, would have torn from

her annals the pages that do your virtues honour. But the deputies of

your communes penetrated the design, and put you on your guard in time.

A king, who has constantly desired only the happiness of his people,

informed by Monsieur Lafayette, that steadfast friend of liberty, of the

true state of the case, was able to crush the perfidious machinations of

a minister whom revenge ceaselessly spurred on to injure you. Ajaccio

showed itself resolute in its address; the lamentable condition into

which the most despotic of all governments had brought you had there

been so powerfully impressed on people's minds. The hitherto slumbering

Bastia awoke at the sound of danger, and seized its weapons with that

resolution which has ever characterized it. Arena came from Paris to

Balagna full of those sentiments which make a man capable of undertaking

everything, and of fearing no danger. His weapons in the one hand, the

decrees of the National Assembly in the other, he made the people's

enemies turn pale. Achille Murati, the conqueror of Capraja, who carried

despair into Genoa itself, and who wanted but opportunity and a wider

field to be a Turenne, reminded the sharers of his fame that it was

time to win it over again, and that their country needed—not intrigue,

which it never understood—but steel and fire. Before the rising din

of a resistance so universal, Gaffori withdrew into the nothingness

from which intrigue had made him emerge against his will. He remained

trembling in the fortress of Corte. Narbonne hastened away from Lyons

to bury his shame and his hellish plans in Rome. A few days later, and

Corsica is linked to France, Paoli is recalled, and in a single instant

your prospects are changed, and a new career offered you for which you

would never have ventured to hope.

"Excuse me, Monsieur, excuse me; I took my pen to defend you, but my

heart utterly revolted against a system which brought treachery and

perfidy in its train. What! son of this same fatherland, have you

never had a filial feeling towards it? What! was there no emotion

in your heart at the sight of the rocks, the trees, the houses, the

neighbourhoods, which were the scene of your sports in childhood? When

you came to the world, it carried you on its bosom, it nourished you

with its fruits. When you came to years of discretion, it set its hopes

upon you, it honoured you with its confidence, it said to you: 'My son,

you see the wretched state to which the injustice of men has brought

me; collecting my energies in my passionate grief, I once more attain

a vigour which promises me sure and infallible restoration; but I am

threatened anew; hasten, my son, to Versailles; inform the great king

better, dissipate his suspicions, implore his friendship.'

"Well, and what then? A little gold made you a betrayer of the trust

your country had reposed in you; for the sake of a little gold you were

soon seen with the parricidal sword in your hand lacerating its bosom.

Ah! Monsieur, I am far from wishing you any harm; but tremble ... there

are pangs of conscience that avenge. Your fellow-citizens, who abhor

you, will enlighten France as to your true character. The estates and

the pensions, the fruit of your treasons, will be taken from you. Bowed

down by age and misery, in the horrible solitude of crime, you will live

long enough to be tormented by your conscience. The father will point

you out to his son, the teacher to his scholar, and say: "Children,

learn to honour your country, virtue, fidelity, and humanity.'

"And she, whose youth, beauty, and innocence they prostitute—her pure

and chaste heart trembles under the touch of a polluted hand? Estimable

and unhappy woman!...

"Soon the cordons of honour and the pomp of wealth will vanish, and the

contempt of mankind will be heaped on you. Will you seek, on the breast

of him who is the author of that report, a consolation with which your

gentle and loving soul cannot dispense? Will you seek in his eyes tears

to mingle with your own? Will your trembling hand, laid upon his heart,

try to tell him the emotion of yours? Ah! if you find tears with _him_,

they will be tears of remorse. If his heart beats, it will be in the

convulsions of the wretch who dies cursing nature, himself, and the hand

that leads him.

"O Lameth! O Robespierre! O Petion! O Volney! O Mirabeau! O Barnave!

O Bailley! O Lafayette! see, this is the man that dares to sit by

your side! Quite drenched in the blood of his brothers, polluted with

crimes of every kind, he presents himself shamelessly in his General's

uniform, the unrighteous hire of his villanies! He dares to call himself

a representative of the nation, he—who has sold it, and you suffer

it! He dares to raise his eyes to listen to your discourses, and you

suffer it! This the voice of the people!—he had but the votes of twelve

aristocrats! This the voice of the people!—and Ajaccio, Bastia, and most

of the cantons wreaked that upon his effigy which they would willingly

have done upon his person.

"But you, whom the mistake of the moment misleads, whose belief is for

the present abused to make you oppose the projected alterations, will

you endure the traitor? him who, under the cold exterior of a sensible

man, conceals the greed of a lackey? I cannot believe it. You will be

the first to drive him forth in shame and disgrace, as soon as you have

been made to comprehend that web of knaveries of which he has been the

artist.

"I have the honour, Monsieur, to be your very humble, and very obedient

servant,

BONAPARTE."

"From my Cabinet of Milelli,

"Jan. 23, in the second year."

"From my Cabinet of Milelli"—it sounds quite imperially. The reader will

probably find that this bold, unsparing, powerful letter of the youth of

twenty-one, half-Robespierre, half-Murat, is in no respect inferior to

the best specimens of revolutionary eloquence furnished by the pamphlets

of the period.

I may observe here, that of the six Corsican deputies to the Convention,

three voted for the perpetual confinement of Louis Capet, two for his

confinement till peace was established and his banishment thereafter,

Cristoforo Saliceti alone for his death.

CHAPTER VI.

NAPOLEON'S LATEST ACTIVITY IN CORSICA.

In the year 1790, two battalions were to be formed in Corsica, the

soldiers being allowed to name their _chefs_ themselves. It is worth

noticing on this occasion, how the subsequent Cæsar, Napoleon, holds

it for the highest honour, and an almost unattainable piece of good

fortune, to become _chef_ of a battalion. The difficulties were as

great as the energy of the young candidate. The most influential men

of Ajaccio were opposed to him, Cuneo, Ludovico Ornano, Ugo Peretti,

Matias Pozzo di Borgo, and the rich Marius Peraldi. Peraldi laughed at

Napoleon, ridiculed his personal appearance, his diminutive stature, his

limited prospects. This made Napoleon furious, and he challenged him.

Peraldi agreed to a duel. His rival waited for him till nightfall at the

little Chapel of the Greeks, walking restlessly up and down; but Peraldi

did not make his appearance; his family had found means to prevent the

duel.

The wanderer who now takes his way to the Chapel of the Greeks, to enjoy

from it the beautiful view of the city and gulf, sees above him, on the

rocks of the shore, a little Ionic temple. I asked what it meant, and

was told it was the tomb of the Peraldi. Marius, the rival of Napoleon

for a Major's commission, lies buried there. His family has left behind

it no other reputation than that of having been one of the wealthiest

in Corsica.

Madame Letitia sacrificed half her fortune to procure her favourite

son the command of the battalion. Her house was constantly open to

Napoleon's numerous party, her table always covered. Mattresses lay

constantly ready in the rooms and in the passages, to receive his armed

adherents during the night. It was as if the house were in a state

of defence from the Vendetta. Matters looked threatening. Napoleon

was never so excited as at this period; he could not sleep at night,

during the day he wandered restlessly through the rooms, or deliberated

with the Abbé Fesch and his partisans. He was pale and abstracted; his

eyes full of fire, his soul full of passion. Perhaps he approached the

consulship and the empire more calmly than the rank of major in the

National Guard of Ajaccio.

The commissary, who was to conduct the election, had arrived, and was

lodging in the house of the Peraldi. This was alarming. It was resolved,

therefore, on the 18th Brumaire, to have recourse to stratagem. The

partisans of Napoleon arm themselves; one of these—the fierce and

reckless Bagaglino, armed to the teeth—forces his way at night into the

house of the Peraldi, where the family are sitting at supper with the

commissary. "Madame Letitia wishes to speak with you," cries Bagaglino

threateningly; "and immediately!" The commissary follows him, the

Peraldi not venturing to detain their guest; who, carried off by the

Napoleonists, is compelled to quarter himself in the Casa Bonaparte,

under the pretext that with the Peraldi he was not free. This little

_coup d'état_ shows us Napoleon complete.

The Casa Bonaparte now held itself ready for an assault; but Peraldi

made no attempt. The day of the election came, and the people assembled

in the Church of San Francesco. A disturbance arose, Geronimo Pozzo

di Borgo was torn from the pulpit, and with difficulty rescued. The

result of the election was this: Quenza, a Bonapartist, was made first

_chef_—Napoleon, the second. The victory was almost complete, and the

unattainable all but attained; Napoleon was second in command of a

battalion.

Napoleon lived henceforth only among his soldiers, and he was the

soul of his battalion. He now made his practical military studies

before engaging in actual warfare, as he had received his political

schooling in the clubs. Meanwhile, the irritation between the national

battalion and the aristocrats and citizens—the latter worked upon

by the priests—grew stronger every day. After seeing the highland

Corsicans of the present time, one can form some idea of the nature

and appearance of that Quenza-Napoleon battalion. The citizens of

Ajaccio may not have dreaded this troop of Montagnards in the process

of training altogether groundlessly. On Easter-day, of the year 1792,

open hostilities commenced between the battalion and the inhabitants

of Ajaccio. The struggle began on the Place du Diamant; the fighting

lasted several days, and a great deal of blood was shed, neither the

civil authorities nor the military commandant, Maillard, interfering.

Napoleon escaped without injury. When quiet was re-established, he

drew up a justification, in the name of the battalion, and addressed it

to the Department, to the Minister of War, and the Legislative. Three

commissaries hereupon appeared in Ajaccio; they returned a favourable

report as to the conduct of the battalion, but it was removed from the

town. Napoleon went to Corte, where Paoli received him coldly.

In May of the same year, he made a journey to Paris to bring his sister

Eliza from St. Cyr. The changes in the political world took him here

by surprise, and shattered all the hopes of military promotion which

he had thought to realize in Paris. This is said to have produced so

powerful an effect on the passionate nature of the young Corsican, as

to make him entertain thoughts of suicide. He freed himself from them in

a dialogue on self-murder. Napoleon left Paris soon after the frightful

2d of September, and returned to Corsica.

While Dumouriez, therefore, was astonishing the world with the first

military achievements of the young Republic, the man who was destined

to give new shape to Europe, was exerting himself in the wild Corsica,

to make head against the cabals of his opponents—himself forming

counter-cabals, and daily exposing his life to the dagger-thrust and

the musket-ball. Arrived again in Corte, Paoli received him austerely.

The paths of the two had completely separated; for another ambition

was now stirring in the soul of the young Napoleon than to tread in the

footsteps of the noble patriot. Had he done so—had his heart remained

warm for the freedom of Corsica, then perhaps a wild goat-herd, as he

pointed out to me some spot among the hills associated with a tale of

blood, would have said: "See, it was here the Corsican patriot-leader,

Napoleon Bonaparte, fell; he was almost as great as Sampiero."

Paoli gave Napoleon orders to proceed to Bonifazio, and join the

expedition against Sardinia. Napoleon obeyed murmuringly. He remained

eight months in Bonifazio, to make the necessary preparations, as far as

they had been committed to him. On the 22d of January, the day after the

execution of Louis Capet, Napoleon almost lost his life in Bonifazio.

Some marines—a furious rabble from Marseilles—had landed, and commenced

a quarrel with the Corsican battalion; and when Napoleon hastened up to

prevent bloodshed, they received him with shouts of _ça ira!_ cried out

that he was an aristocrat, and, rushing in upon him, would have hung

him on the lamp-post, had not the Maire, the people, and the soldiers

succeeded in putting them to flight.

The enterprise upon Sardinia, of which Truguet was commander-in-chief,

undertaken with a view to frighten the court of Turin, proved utterly

futile. It is affirmed that Paoli had a share in its ill success. It

is true that he had sent a thousand of his National Guards, under the

command of his most trusted friend, Colonna Cesari; but, as the latter

himself afterwards admitted, he had said to him: "Remember, O Cesari!

that Sardinia is the natural ally of our island; that it has, under all

circumstances, supplied us with victuals and ammunition, and that the

King of Piedmont has ever been the friend of the Corsicans and their

cause." The squadron, under the command of Colonna, at length left the

harbour of Bonifazio, and made sail for the island of Santa Maddalena.

Napoleon was next in command under Colonna, and was intrusted with the

artillery. The young officer burned with impatience; it was his first

deed of arms. He was one of the foremost to jump ashore, and he threw,

with his own hand, a fireball into the little town of Maddalena. But

the admirable measures he had taken proved completely fruitless; the

Sardinians made a sortie; Colonna immediately ordered the retreat to be

sounded.

The young Napoleon wept for rage; he made the most vehement

representations to Colonna, and when the latter listened to him with

cool indifference, Napoleon turned to some officers, and said, "He does

not understand me." "You are an impudent fellow!" thundered Colonna to

him. The born soldier knew his duty, was silent, and placed himself at

his post. "He is a parade-horse, and nothing more," said he afterwards.

Napoleon's first expedition was thus unfortunate, discreditable—a

retreat.

On his return to Bonifazio, he learned that Paoli, who now saw himself

compelled to throw off the mask, had dissolved the Quenza battalion.

This occurred in the spring of 1793, about the time that the Convention

sent Saliceti, Delcher, and Lacombe, to the island as commissaries.

Lucian Bonaparte and Bartolommeo Arena had denounced Paoli. But Napoleon

had no part in this denunciation; the memory of his father, and his

own generous spirit, led him, on the contrary, to defend his great

countryman. He himself wrote an apology for Paoli, and sent it to the

Convention—an action that does him honour. This remarkable document

has been preserved, though in a somewhat defective state. We have the

defence, it appears to me, as Napoleon first threw it off, previously

to giving it a complete form.

NAPOLEON'S LETTER TO THE CONVENTION.

"REPRESENTATIVES!—You are the true organs of the people's sovereignty.

All your decrees are dictated by the nation, or receive their effect

immediately from the nation. Every one of your laws is a benefit, and

earns for you a new claim on the gratitude of posterity, which owes to

you the Republic, and on that of the world, which will date from you

its freedom.

"A single decree that you have passed has greatly disheartened the city

of Ajaccio; that which commands a feeble gray-haired man of seventy

to drag himself to your bar, and place himself for a moment beside the

impious mover of sedition or the venal self-seeker.

"Paoli a mover of sedition, or an ambitious man?

"Seditious! and with what object? To revenge himself on the family of

the Bourbons, whose _perfidious policy_ overwhelmed his country with

calamity, and _forced himself into banishment_. But was not the end

of their tyranny also the end of his exile; and have you not already

appeased his wrath—if he still cherished it—by the blood of Louis?

"Seditious! and with what object? To restore the aristocracy of the

nobles and the priests? He who, since his thirteenth year ... he who

was no sooner at the head of affairs than he destroyed _feudalism_, and

knew no other distinction than that of the citizen; he who, thirty years

ago, fought against Rome, and was _excommunicated_,[M] who made himself

master of the estates of the bishops to give them away, to Venice ...

in Italy....

"Seditious! and with what object? To deliver Corsica into the hands of

England? he who would not deliver it to France, despite the efforts of

Chauvelin, who did not spare titles nor marks of favour!

"Give Corsica to England! What would he gain by living in the mire of

London? Why did he not remain there when he was banished?

"Paoli a self-seeker! If Paoli is a self-seeker, _what more can he

desire_? He is the object of his people's affection, and they refuse

him nothing; _he is at the head of the army_; he is on the eve of the

day when he must defend the island against a foreign attack.

"If Paoli was ambitious, then he has gained everything by the Republic;

and if he has showed himself an adherent of ... since the Constituent

Assembly, what should he do now, _when the people is everything_?

"Paoli ambitious! Representatives! when the French were governed by

a corrupt court, when men believed neither in virtue nor in love

of country, then certainly it might have been said that Paoli was

ambitious. _We made war against the tyrants; it is to be supposed that

that was not from love of country and of liberty, but from the ambition

of our leaders!_ In Coblenz, Paoli must be considered as ambitious;

but in Paris—_the centre of French freedom_—Paoli, if people know him

well, must be accounted the patriarch of the French Republic; _posterity

will think thus_—the people think thus. Follow my advice, silence

calumny, and the utterly corrupt men who use it as their instrument.

Representatives! Paoli is more than a grayhaired man of threescore and

ten—he is infirm. Otherwise he would have gone to your bar to crush his

enemies. _We owe him everything_—even the happiness of being a French

Republic. He enjoys our constant trust. Revoke, as concerns him, your

decree of the 2d of April, and restore joy to this whole people."...

Soon after this, however, the young revolutionist completely quarrelled

with Paoli; they became deadly enemies. The aged patriot found in

the young man the most violent adversary, not of his person, but of

his ideas. It is said that Paoli did not quite know him at that time,

and had hinted to him that it was his intention to separate Corsica

from France, and effect a connexion with England, that the indignant

Napoleon did not conceal his anger, and that Paoli hereupon flew into a

furious passion, and conceived the most violent hatred for his opponent.

Pasquale's adherents were numerous, and the fortress of Ajaccio was

in the hands of his friend Colonna. Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo, then

procurator-general, cited before the Convention, defied the summons, and

lived now under the ban of the Convention, and at open war with France.

The three representatives now made Napoleon Inspector-general of

Corsican Artillery, and instructed him to reduce the citadel of Ajaccio.

He attempted it, but all his exertions to conquer the fortress of his

native town were in vain. Destiny had planted no laurels for Napoleon

in Corsica. During the siege, his life was on one occasion in extreme

danger. He had occupied the Tower of Capitello with about fifty men,

in order to operate from that point by land, while the vessels of war

carried on the bombardment from the sea. A storm blew the fleet out of

the gulf, and Napoleon remained cut off from it in the tower, where he

had to defend himself for three days, living on horse-flesh, till some

herdsmen from the mountains freed him from his perilous situation, and

he succeeded in reaching the fleet.

Much disconcerted, he was proceeding to Bastia by land. On the way,

however, he learned that his life was threatened, that Marius Peraldi

had instigated the people to seize him, and put him into the hands of

Paoli, who meant to shoot him as soon as he had him in his power. In

Vivario he was concealed by the parish priest; in Bocognano his friends

rescued him with the greatest difficulty from the fury of the people;

during the night, he escaped through the window from the chamber in

which he had hid himself, and at length reached Ajaccio in safety.

Here again, however, menaced still more seriously, he fled from his

house to a grotto near the Chapel of the Greeks, where he remained

concealed for a night. His friends now conveyed him safely on board

a vessel, and he reached Bastia by sea. The fury of the Paolists was

meanwhile directed upon Napoleon's family. Madame Letitia, terrified at

the symptoms of approaching danger, fled with her children to Milelli,

accompanied by some trusty peasants of Bastelica and Bocognano. Louis,

Eliza, Paulina, and the Abbé Fesch were with her; Jerome and Caroline

remained in concealment with the Ramolinos. Still insecure in Milelli,

the persecuted family fled during the night to the shore in the vicinity

of the Tower of Capitello, to await there the arrival of the French

fleet, which had been announced as on its way to reduce the citadel of

Ajaccio. The flight through the rugged hill-country was difficult and

fatiguing; for there are no paths in that region but over the rocks,

through the macchia, and over the mountain-torrents. Madame Letitia

held little Paulina by the hand, Fesch preceded with Eliza and Louis; a

troop of adherents from Bastelica, the birthplace of Sampiero, marched

in advance, and behind them the men of Bocognano, armed with daggers,

muskets, and pistols. The family of Napoleon wandering thus through the

mountains, reached at length, after great exertions—clambering over

rocks, and wading through streams—the shore at Capitello, where they

all concealed themselves in the woods.

About this time Napoleon had thrown himself on board a small vessel

in Bastia, had out-sailed the French fleet, and landed at Isola Rossa,

where many of the herdsmen of his family have their pasturing-grounds.

Here learning that his relatives were in flight, he sent shepherds

out in all directions to seek for them, and passed the night waiting

in the most painful suspense for news. Morning dawned; he was sitting

under a rock, anxiously pondering the fate of his friends. Suddenly a

herdsman rushed up to him, crying, "Save yourself!" A band of men from

Ajaccio, in quest of Bonaparte and his family, was hastening towards

him. Napoleon sprang into the sea. His little vessel, a _chebeque_, kept

his pursuers off by its fire, and the boat it had immediately lowered

took him safely on board.

On the same day Bonaparte sailed into the gulf, and keeping close in

shore, he saw people making signals to be taken off. These were his

mother Letitia and her children.

The suffering family was conveyed with all speed to Calvi, where

hospitable entertainers were found. But the house of the Bonapartes, in

Ajaccio, had been entered and plundered by the furious mob. The family

owed its rescue entirely to the prudence and foresight of the Corsican

Costa, to whom Napoleon in his will bequeathed the sum of 100,000 francs

in acknowledgment of the service.

The young Bonaparte himself, called away from a fruitless attempt upon

Ajaccio, in which he was not supported by the fleet, also sailed to

Calvi; and leaving Corsica from this point, he appears again at Toulon.

Pasquale Paoli himself had thus driven him out into European history.

Two men, bitter enemies of each other—Marbœuf and Paoli—that is,

despotism and democracy, had guided Napoleon to his special career. When

Napoleon became consul, and his star shone the Cynosure of the world,

the star of Paoli had long since set. Deeply does it move me when I

think of the noble old Pasquale living in forgotten and solitary exile

in London, and illuminating his house in unselfish joy, when he hears of

the dignity to which his countryman has attained, forgetting his grudge,

and hoping that the great Corsican may become a blessing to humanity. In

one of his letters, he says: "Napoleon has consummated our Vendetta on

all those that were the authors of our fall. I only wish he may remember

his country." He remained in banishment; Napoleon did not recall him,

perhaps because he feared to excite the jealousy of the French.

In the days of his prosperity, Bonaparte forgot his little fatherland;

thankless and weak, like all _parvenus_, who are unwilling to be

reminded of the obscure spot that gave them birth. He did nothing for

the poor island, and the Corsicans have not been able to forget this.

They still remember that the Emperor, when a Corsican once presented

himself to him, drily asked him: "Well, how is it in Corsica; are the

Corsicans always murdering each other yet?"

He visited his native island only once after that flight from Calvi—on

his return from Egypt. On the 29th of September 1799, his ship ran

into the harbour of Ajaccio; with him were Murat, who was yet to leave

this same harbour under very changed circumstances—Eugene, Berthier,

Lannes, Andreosi, Louis Bonaparte, Morge, and Berthollet. He sat there

on board, and read the journals during the night and great part of the

next day. He was unwilling to land; but his officers were curious to

become acquainted with his birthplace, and he at length yielded to their

solicitations, and those of the citizens of Ajaccio. A man, who had

in his boyhood been one of the spectators of this landing, gave me an

account of it. "Look you," said he, "this Place du Diamant was covered

with a huzzaing crowd, and the people filled the roofs; they wanted

to see the wonderful man, who, a few years before, had walked about

these streets a simple officer, and one of the leading democrats of

Ajaccio. He alighted at the Casa Bonaparte, and came out afterwards and

walked in the Place du Diamant. But I must tell you of a circumstance

that does him honour. When Napoleon lived in Ajaccio, the priests and

aristocrats were his bitter enemies. He was one day returning to his

house, and had arrived just at the corner of this street, when he saw a

priest, a relation of my own, standing at the window of yonder house,

and levelling a musket at him. Napoleon bent himself that moment, and

the ball whizzed over his head into the wall behind;—a moment sooner,

and the world would never have seen an Emperor Napoleon. Well, General

Bonaparte met that priest on the Place du Diamant. The man, well

remembering that he had once shot at him, turned off to one side. But

Napoleon saw him, stepped up to him, gave him his hand, and reminded

him good-humouredly of old times. Look you, he was no Corsican in that;

great men readily forget injuries." Napoleon, however, was a thorough

Corsican when he had the Duke of Enghien shot. This deed was the deed

of a Corsican bandit, and can only be rightly understood when we know

what the custom of the Vendetta in Corsica allows—the murder even of

innocent members of an enemy's family. Napoleon could not quite disown

his Corsican temperament; and thus we find him romantic, theatrical,

adventurous, as the Corsicans in a certain degree are. Egypt, Russia,

Elba, are passages in his history in which he was nothing but a great

and genial adventurer.

He went out shooting on occasion of that visit to Ajaccio, and spent a

day in Milelli, where he wrote the pamphlet against Buttafucco. How many

wonderful deeds lay already behind him! how many princes and peoples

had the might of his sword and the thunder of his phrases already

overthrown! He called his herdsmen about him, and richly rewarded that

Bagaglino who had aided him in carrying out his first _coup d'état_.

He distributed his herds and his lands. His nurse, too, Camilla Ilari,

came to see him: she embraced him weeping; and as she presented him

with a flask of milk she had brought, said in her _naïve_ and simple

way: "My son, I gave you the milk of my heart—take now the milk of my

goat." Napoleon gave her a comfortable house in Ajaccio, and a large

extent of arable land; and when he became Emperor, he added a pension of

3600 francs. After remaining six days in Corsica, he again sailed from

Ajaccio for France.

He never afterwards visited his native island; but fate one day gave

him a sight of it, when, a defeated man, whom history had laid aside

as no longer available for its aims, he stood upon the narrow cliff of

Elba. Then ironic destiny showed him the obscure corner from which, as

a child of fortune, he had issued into the world to seek a career.

Later, on St. Helena, his thoughts constantly recurred to Corsica.

People on their deathbeds usually wander back in imagination through

the course of their lives, and dwell with greatest pleasure on

their childhood. He spoke a great deal of his native island. In the

Commentaries, he says on one occasion: "My good Corsicans were not

contented with me in the time of the Consulate and the Empire. They

affirmed I had done little for my country.... Those who hated me, and

still more those who envied me, were continually on the watch; all

that I did for my Corsicans was cried down as a theft and an injustice

to the French. This necessary policy had turned away the hearts of my

countrymen from me, and made them cold towards me. I pity them, but I

could not act otherwise. When the Corsicans saw me unfortunate, abused

by many an ungrateful Frenchman—when they saw all Europe in conspiracy

against me, they forgot all, like men of steadfast and incorruptible

virtue, and were ready to sacrifice themselves for me if I had

wished.... What memories Corsica has left me! I think with joy still

on its fair regions, on its mountains; I remember still the fragrance

that it exhales. I should have bettered the lot of my beautiful Corsica,

I should have made my fellow-countrymen happy; but days of misfortune

came, and I have not been able to carry out my plans."

The first question that Napoleon put to the Corsican Antommarchi, his

physician, when he entered his room in St. Helena, was: "Have you a

Filippini?" Many of his countrymen had been his companions throughout

his career; he had raised many to elevated stations—Bacciocchi, Arena,

Cervioni, Arrighi, Saliceti, Casabianca, Abbatucci, Sebastiani. His

relation to that Colonna who had been the friend of Paoli, and who had

once been hostile to him, was to the last one of intimate friendship.

It is said that Paoli had commissioned Colonna to lay an ambuscade for

Napoleon near Ajaccio, and take him alive or dead; such, at least, is

the report. Colonna refused. He remained the friend of both, of Napoleon

as well as Paoli—and that without playing the hypocrite, for he was

a high-spirited man. He was the first who knew of Napoleon's flight

from Elba; and in the will which he made in St. Helena, the Emperor

intrusted to him the charge of his mother. Colonna discharged this

trust conscientiously, and till Letitia's death remained with her as

her friend and manager of her affairs. He then retired to Vico, near

Ajaccio.

The dying Napoleon received extreme unction from the hands of a

Corsican, the priest Vignale, who was afterwards murdered in his native

island. He died thus among brother Corsicans, who had not forsaken him.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO COFFINS.

"Where are the princes who held mightiest sway?

Where are the heroes all, the wise and bold?

The world endures when thou hast pass'd away,

And none has read its riddle deep and old.

The course of things is full of teachings wise,

But, reckless still, we close unheeding eyes."—FIRDUSI.

As I called up before my mind the history of Napoleon, his splendid

empire, the peoples and princes that this headlong comet had drawn

onward in his train, the flood of events he had thrown upon the world,

the influence he had exercised over unnumbered human destinies—there

came over me, in his now desolate and silent house, at once a sadness

and its consolation.

All those boundless passions that devoured half the world and were

not satisfied, where are they, and what power have they now? They

are as a dream, as a great fable that Father Time tells his children.

Our thanks are due to Time—the silent and mysterious power that again

levels all, humbles heaven-aspiring potentates, checks unscrupulous

self-aggrandizement, and effectually ostracizes over-grown ambition.

Where is Napoleon? What is left of him?

A name and a relic, which an easily blinded nation now publicly

worships. What lately happened beyond the Rhine, appears to me like the

celebration of Napoleon's suppressed funeral of 1821.[N] But the dead

do not rise again. After the gods have come their ghosts; and after the

hero-tragedy, the satyr-farce. The breath of a charnel-house has spread

through the world from beyond the Rhine, since they wakened a dead man

there.

I went from the house of Letitia to the church where her coffin stands.

The street of the King of Rome leads to the Cathedral of Ajaccio.

This church is a heavy building, with a plain facade; above its portal

are some defaced armorial bearings. They are, doubtless, those of the

extinct Republic of Genoa. The interior of the cathedral has a motley

and rustic appearance. Heavy pillars divide it into three naves (_drei

Schiffe_); the dome is small, like the gallery.

Near the choir, to the right, a little chapel, hung with black, has been

put up. Two coffins, covered with black velvet, stand therein, before

an altar, coarsely decorated in the style we find in village churches.

Clumsy wooden candlesticks have been placed at the head and foot of each

coffin; and above each hangs a perpetual, but extinguished lamp. On the

coffin to the left lies a cardinal's hat and an amaranth-wreath; on the

coffin to the right an imperial crown and an amaranth-wreath.

They are the coffins of Cardinal Fesch and Madame Letitia. They were

brought hither from their Italian tombs in the year 1851. Letitia died

in her Roman palace, in the Place di Venezia, on the 2d of February

1836, and her coffin had since stood in a church of the little town of

Corneto, near Rome.

No marble, no sculpture, nothing of the pomp of death, adorns the spot

where a woman lies who gave birth to an emperor, three kings, and three

princesses.

I was astonished at the unconscious irony, the deep tragic meaning that

lay, as it seemed to me, in the almost rustic simplicity of Letitia's

tomb. It was like a princely tomb in the scenes of a theatre. Her

coffin rests on a high wooden platform; the clumsy candlesticks are of

wood, the gold is tinsel. The canopy of the chapel would fain look like

velvet, but it is of common taffeta, and the long silver fringes are

only silver paper. The golden imperial diadem on the coffin is of gilded

wood. The amaranthine wreath of Letitia alone is genuine.

I was told that this chapel was merely temporary, and that a new

cathedral was to be built, with a beautiful tomb for Letitia. Improbable

enough; the Corsicans are very poor, and for my part, I should be sorry

to see it. The worthy citizens of Ajaccio do not know how wise they have

been. A profound philosophy speaks from this chapel—what sort of crowns

were those that Letitia of Ajaccio and her children wore? For one short

evening they were princes, then they hurriedly threw away sceptre and

purple, and vanished. History itself, therefore, has laid the tinselled

crown on the coffin of the daughter of the citizen Ramolino. Let it

lie—it is not the less beautiful that it is counterfeit, like the lofty

fortunes of the bastard kings that this woman bore.

Never, so long as the world has stood, has a mother's heart beat higher

than the heart of the woman in this coffin. She saw her children, one

after another, stand at the loftiest zenith of human glory; and, one

after another, saw the same children fall. She has paid Destiny its

debt.

Truly, it is hard for him who stands by this coffin to restrain his

emotion, so sad, so moving is the great tragedy of a mother's heart that

lies therein enclosed. What an undeserved fate!—and how came it that, in

the bosom of this gay, young, unpretending woman, those world-convulsing

forces and those men and city-devouring passions were to ripen?

CHAPTER VIII.

POZZO DI BORGO.

The house in the street Napoleon, in which the fugitive Murat lived, has

been rebuilt in a style of great magnificence. The arms of the Pozzo di

Borgo family, above the door, inform us to whom it belongs. After the

Bonapartes, these Pozzi di Borgo are the most famous family in Ajaccio;

they are of an old and noble stock, and their name began to be of

note long before that of the Bonapartes. In the sixteenth century they

distinguished themselves in the service of the Venetians. The Corsican

poet, Biagino di Leca, who, in his epic called _Il d'Ornano Marte_,

celebrates the achievements of Alfonso Ornano, praises also several of

the Pozzi di Borgo, and predicts to their race undying fame.

The family has certainly attained a European importance, in the person

of Count Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, the friend of Paoli, and in his

youth the friend of the young Napoleon; but later, the unrelenting,

the truly _Corsican_ foe of the Emperor. He was born in Alata, a

village near Ajaccio, on the 8th of March 1768; he studied law in Pisa

together with Carlo Bonaparte, and afterwards made himself conspicuous

in Corsica, first as revolutionary democrat, then as Paolist. In the

year 1791 he was representative for Ajaccio, then Procurator-general

and Paoli's right hand. When Corsica allied herself with England, this

clever politician was chosen president of the Council of State, under

the viceroyship of Elliot. People say that he brought his patron, Paoli,

into bad odour with the English, in order to make his own influence

supreme. He afterwards left Corsica, made several journeys to London,

travelled to Vienna, to Russia, to Constantinople, to Syria; wandering

from country to country and court to court, this unwearied foe kept

stirring up with ceaseless activity the hatred of the cabinets against

Napoleon. Alexander had made him a member of the Russian Privy Council

in 1802. Napoleon, in his turn, pursued him with a hatred equally

bitter; he longed to have this man within his power—this artful and

dreaded antagonist that crossed him at every turn. At the peace of

Presburg he demanded that he should be delivered into his hands. Had

he obtained this demand, he would have done with Pozzo di Borgo what

Charles XII. did with Patkul. Remarkable is this enmity—it is true

Corsican Vendetta—Corsican hatred playing a part in universal history.

It was Pozzo di Borgo who induced Bernadotte to become the active

opponent of Napoleon; it was he who impelled the allies to a speedy

march on Paris; it was he who set the King of Rome aside; he who, at

the Congress of Vienna, insisted that Napoleon should be banished from

the dangerous Elba to a distant island. At Waterloo he fought with

armed hand against his great adversary, and received a wound. And when

at length his gigantic but now for ever vanquished foe lay dead in St.

Helena, he uttered those haughty and terrible words: "I have not killed

Napoleon; but I have thrown the last shovelful of earth upon him!"

Pozzo di Borgo earned a Russian coronet, and the honour of remaining

the perpetual representative of all Russian states at the court of

France. Living in Paris, he became a frank opponent of the reaction,

and thereby endangered his relation to the courts. Notwithstanding his

career, he was, and remained, a Corsican. I have been told that he never

laid aside his Corsican habits of life: he loved his country. It was,

one may say, another victory of his over Napoleon, that he took from

him the gratitude of his countrymen. Napoleon did nothing for Corsica,

Pozzo di Borgo much. He had the works of the two Corsican historians,

Filippini and Peter Cyrnæus, published at his own expense, and Gregori

dedicated to him a collection of the statutes. Pozzo di Borgo's name

is now inseparably connected with the three greatest documents of

Corsican history, and is imperishable. He freely spent his large

means on charitable foundations, and in general beneficence towards

his countrymen. He died a private individual at Paris, on the 15th of

January 1842, at the age of seventy-four, at variance with the world

about him, sick and sad at heart, and weary of life. He was one of the

most skilful diplomatists and clearest heads of the present century.

His immense fortune passed to his nephews, who have bought rich estates

in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio. A few years ago, one of them was

murdered close to the town. He had the management of the funds devoted

by Count Carlo Andrea to benevolent purposes, and had drawn odium upon

himself by acts of injustice. I was told, besides, that he had seduced

a girl; and that, as he refused to pay a certain large sum demanded

in reparation by her kinsfolk, they resolved upon his death. One day

when he was driving from his villa to the town, these men stopped and

surrounded the carriage, and called to him: "Come out, nephew of Carlo

Andrea Pozzo di Borgo!" The unhappy man obeyed instantly. The murderers

then coolly completed this summary execution, in broad daylight, and

on the open highway, as if it were an act of popular justice against

a criminal. Their shots, however, had not quite killed the man. The

murderers placed him in his carriage, and bade the coachman drive

homewards, that the nephew of Pozzo di Borgo might die in his bed. They

then took to the woods, where they met with their death some time after,

in a fight with the gendarmes.

Such is one shocking instance of the rude popular justice still so

prevalent in Corsica. I shall here relate another. The circumstances

excite our astonishment and admiration, but are at the same time

exceedingly painful. The scene is Alata, the native village of the Pozzo

di Borgo family, a few miles from Ajaccio.

A CORSICAN BRUTUS.

Two grenadiers belonging to a French regiment, forming, as Genoese

auxiliaries, the garrison of Ajaccio, one day deserted. They fled to

the hills of Alata, and kept themselves concealed there in the wild

fastnesses, subsisting on the hospitality of the poor but kind-hearted

shepherds.

Sacred are the laws of hospitality; he who breaks them is before God

and man like Cain.

When the next spring came, it chanced that some officers from the

garrison went a-hunting to the hills of Alata. They came near the

place where the two fugitives lived in concealment. These latter

caught sight of the huntsmen, and cowered behind a rock, lest they

should be recognised and perhaps shot down as game. Quite near them a

young herdsman was watching his goats. The colonel of the regiment, De

Rozières, stepped up to him and inquired if any deserters were concealed

in the mountains thereabouts. The herdsman said that he did not know,

and was embarrassed. De Rozières began to have suspicions. He threatened

the youth with severe punishment—with immediate imprisonment in the

Tower of Ajaccio, if he did not tell the truth.

Joseph was frightened; he said nothing, but he pointed to the spot where

the poor grenadiers lay hiding. The officer did not understand him.

"Speak!" he shouted. Joseph said nothing, but pointed again. The other

officers, who had laid hold of the young man, now left him, and hastened

in the direction where he had pointed, expecting possibly to find some

animal which this stupid mute knew to be lying there.

The two deserters started up and took to flight, but were overtaken and

made fast.

Colonel de Rozières gave Joseph four bright louis-d'ors as informer's

reward. When the young herdsman saw the gold pieces in his own hand,

he forgot, in his childish joy, officers and grenadiers and the whole

world; for he had never seen the like before. He ran into his father's

hut—called father, mother, and brothers together, and behaved like one

out of his wits as he showed them his treasure.

"How didst thou earn this gold, my son Joseph?" asked the old shepherd.

The son narrated what had happened. With every word he uttered, his

father's countenance grew darker; the brothers seemed horror-struck,

and, by the time his story was told, Joseph had grown pale as death.

Sacred are the laws of hospitality; he who breaks them is before God

and man like Cain.

The old shepherd threw one terrible glance on his trembling son, and

left the hut. He called all his kinsfolk together. When they were

assembled, he related to them the circumstances, and requested them

to pronounce judgment on his son; for it appeared to him that he

was a traitor, and had brought shame on his own house, and all the

neighbourhood.

This court of kinsmen pronounced the deed worthy of death, and there was

not a dissenting voice. "Wo to me and to my son!" cried the old man in

despair. "Wo to my wife that bare me the Judas!"

The kinsmen went to Joseph. They took him and led him to the city-wall

of Ajaccio, to a lonely place.

"Wait here," said the old shepherd; "I will go to the commandant, and

beg of him the lives of the two grenadiers. Let their lives be my son's

life."

The old man went to Colonel de Rozières. On his knees he implored

of him the pardon of the two soldiers. The officer gazed on him in

astonishment, and could not understand why this compassionate shepherd

should weep so bitterly for two foreign soldiers. But he said to him

that the punishment of the deserter was death; so the law willed it.

The old man rose, and went out groaning.

He returned to the wall, where his friends stood with the unhappy

Joseph. "It was in vain," he said, "my son Joseph, thou must die; die

like a brave man; and farewell!"

Poor Joseph wept, but he was quiet and composed. A priest had been

brought, who confessed him, and endeavoured to comfort the unhappy

youth.

It was just the hour when they were scourging the two deserters to death

with rods. Joseph placed himself quietly by the wall. The kinsmen took

certain aim—and Joseph was dead!

When he had fallen, his old father, bitterly weeping, took the four

louis-d'ors, gave them to the priest, and said: "Go to the commandant,

and say: "Sir, here you have the Judas-money back. We are poor and

honest people, and have executed justice on him who took them from your

hand. The laws of hospitality are sacred, and he who breaks them is

before God and man as Cain.'"

* * * * *

In Alata and Ajaccio, the noble action of a woman of the Pozzo di Borgo

family is still well remembered.

MARIANNA POZZO DI BORGO.

In Appietto, near Ajaccio, the people were merrily celebrating the

Carnival. According to an ancient custom, still observed in the island,

the Carnival-king sat on a throne in the middle of the market-place,

a golden crown on his head, and surrounded by his Ministers of State.

Tables had been placed there, covered with fruits, wine, and provisions

of every sort. For the Carnival-king had vigorously imposed his taxes;

it is Corsican Carnival-law that he has the right to tax the families

of the village, each according to its means; and this tribute they must

pay in wine and viands for the common entertainment.

It was a merry feast, and the wine was not spared. Guitar and violin

were not idle, and the young folks were wheeling in the dance.

Suddenly, in the midst of the merriment, was heard a shot and a cry,

and the revellers scattered in every direction. A wild tumult arose in

the market-place of Appietto. The young Felix Pozzo di Borgo was lying

in his blood. Andrea Romanetti had shot him dead—some insulting words

had been dropped. Andrea had taken to the macchia.

They bore the dead youth into the house of his mother. The women raised

their wail; the guitars were silent.—Felix's mother, Marianna, was a

widow; she had seen much trouble. As soon as the youth was buried, she

dried her tears, and thought only of avenging him, for she was a woman

of a high spirit, and sprung of the ancient house of Colonna d'Istria.

Marianna laid aside her female dress, and put on male attire. She

wrapped herself in the pelone, put a Phrygian cap upon her head, girded

herself with the carchera, placed dagger and pistols in her belt,

and grasped the double-barrel. In all respects she was like a rough

Corsican man; but her scarlet girdle, the velvet border of her pelone,

and the ornamented hilt of her dagger, which shone with ivory and

mother-of-pearl, showed that she belonged to a noble house.

She put herself at the head of her relations, and unrestingly pursued

the murderer of her son. Andrea Romanetti flew from bush to bush, from

grotto to grotto, and from hill to hill. But Marianna kept close upon

his track. In the darkness of night, the fugitive threw himself into his

own house in the village of Marchesacchia. Here a girl connected with

the family of his enemies detected him, and gave information. Marianna

was immediately on the spot. Her relations surrounded the house.

Romanetti made a brave defence, but when his powder was exhausted, and

his enemies had got upon the roof, and from that side were forcing an

entrance, he saw that he was a lost man. He now thought of nothing but

the welfare of his soul; for he was pious and God-fearing.

"Stop!" cried Romanetti from the house, "I will surrender; but promise

me first, that before I die, I shall have a confessor." Marianna Pozzo

di Borgo promised him this.

Romanetti then came out, and gave himself into the hands of his foes.

They brought him to the village of Toppa, and there they led him before

the house of the parish priest, Saverius Casalonga. Marianna called the

priest out, and prayed him to receive the confession of Romanetti, for

that after it he must die.

The priest begged the unhappy man's life with tears; but his prayers

were fruitless. He then received his confession, and while this

proceeded, Marianna lay upon her knees and besought God that He would

have mercy on the murderer of her son.

The confession was ended. The Pozzi di Borgo led Romanetti outside the

village, and bound him to a tree.

They raised their pieces; suddenly Marianna rushed before them. "Stop!"

she cried, "for God's sake, stop!" and she ran to the tree where

Romanetti stood bound, and flung her arms round the murderer of her son.

"In the name of God," she cried, "I forgive him. Yes, he has made me

the most unhappy of mothers, but ye shall do him no further harm, and

shoot me rather than him." And she continued to hold her enemy in her

embrace, and to protect him with her own body.

The priest came forward; but his words were not needed. The men loosed

Romanetti, and from that moment he was free, and his life sacred for

the Pozzi di Borgo, so that none ever touched a hair of his head.

CHAPTER IX.

ENVIRONS OF AJACCIO.

I spent some time in wandering through the country round Ajaccio.

The uneven nature of the ground allows you to walk only in three

directions—along the shore to the north, inland along the highway to

Bastia, and on the other side of the gulf, on the road to Sartene;

the mountains close in on the fourth side. Footpaths wind among the

vineyards, which adorn in great numbers the country to the north-east

of Ajaccio.

In these vineyards are to be seen those curious watch-houses, which

are peculiar to Ajaccio, and are called Pergoliti. They are formed

of the stems of four young pines, which support a small hut, raised

entirely above the ground, and thatched with straw. The watchman bears

the dignified name of Baron. He is armed with a double-barrelled gun,

and from time to time blows a blast on a conch or a shrill pipe made

of clay, for the purpose of notifying his presence, and of terrifying

robbers.

One evening, a hospitable old man conducted me into his vineyard on

San Giovanni. He loaded me with bunches of beautiful Muscatel grapes,

plucked almonds for me, and juicy plums and figs, which grow in

luxuriant confusion among the vines. I happened to be passing along the

road, when, after the hospitable manner of the country, he invited me

to enter his garden. A very benevolent old man he was, and his reverend

appearance reminded me strongly of the pictures of old age we find

in the poems of Gleim's epoch, the touching simplicity of which often

evidences a truer human wisdom than is discoverable in the most popular

poems of our own time. Can there be seen a more beautiful picture than

that of a cheerful and healthy old man in the garden planted by himself

in his youth, the fruits of which he now kindly shares with the weary

travellers by the wayside? Yes! thus peaceful and benevolent ought the

close of man's life upon this earth to be.

The old man was talkative, praised this and that fruit, and described

the processes necessary for raising a juicy growth. The vines are here

trained to the height of four or five feet on poles, like beans, and

in general four vines are planted with their tops bound together in a

square shallow trough. The grape-harvest was large, but the disease

had made its appearance in many places. The wine of Ajaccio is hot,

like the Spanish. I found in this vineyard also, for the first time,

the ripe fruit of the Indian fig-tree. After these trees have shed

their cactus blossoms, the fruit ripens very rapidly. The fig is of a

yellowish colour; the rind is peeled off, and only the inside of the fig

eaten, which is unpleasantly sweet. Various attempts have been made to

extract sugar from them. The power of growth displayed by this species

of cactus, which grows in astonishing luxuriance round Ajaccio, is very

remarkable. A leaf placed in the ground quickly strikes out roots, and

becomes an independent plant. It requires the very least nourishment,

and will grow on the thinnest soil.

A beautiful villa, in the castellated style, with Gothic towers, and

immense imperial eagles carved in stone, stands near Mount San Giovanni.

It belongs to Prince Bacciocchi.

The small fertile plain lying beyond, at the end of the bay, is

called Campo Loro. The spirit of a sad event, which occurred in the

Genoese war, hovers over this fruitful spot. Twenty-one herdsmen from

Bastelica—all powerful men, worthy of Sampiero's canton—had taken up a

position here. They made a brave stand against eight hundred Greeks and

Genoese, till they were driven to a marsh, where they were surrounded

and all killed, except one young man. This youth had thrown himself down

among the dead, and, partly covered by the bodies of his companions,

escaped slaughter for a time. But the Genoese afterwards came upon

the field for the purpose of cutting off the heads of the fallen, and

setting them up on the walls of the citadel. They raised the young

herdsman, and brought him before their lieutenant. Condemned to death,

he, the last of the little band, was led through the streets of Ajaccio

with six of his companions' heads hung round him, and was afterwards

quartered, and his body exposed upon the wall to the birds of prey.

At one end of this plain lies the Botanical Garden, which Ajaccio owes

to Louis XVI., and which was commenced under the superintendence of

Carlo Bonaparte. Its original purpose was the acclimatizing of foreign

plants, which were intended to be introduced into France. This garden,

sheltered by high mountains from the cold winds, and lying exposed to

the noonday sun, contains the noblest productions of foreign countries,

which, in the warm climate of Ajaccio, thrive in the open air. You

can walk here among splendid magnolias, those wonderful plants called

poincianas, tulip-trees, gleditschias, bignonias, tamarinds, and cedars

of Lebanon. The cochineal insect is found on the mighty Indian fig-tree

here, just as in Mexico.

The sight of this beautiful garden transports the mind to tropical

regions; and, when standing among these wondrous, foreign trees,

with our eyes fixed on the deep blue waters of the gulf, upon which

the warm summer air broods, it is difficult not to imagine ourselves

on the shores of some Mexican bay. The garden lies near the road to

Bastia—the most frequented of all the highroads from Ajaccio. This is

especially the case in the evening, when the townspeople return from

their occupations in the country.

It was a favourite amusement with me to take a seat on the shore of the

gulf, and to observe the passers-by. The women have all good figures,

and their features are clear and delicate. I was often struck with

the softness of their eyes and the fairness of their complexion. They

wear the fazoletto, or mandile as a head-dress; on Sundays it is of

white gauze, and contrasts well with the black faldetta. The peasant

women generally wear round straw hats with very low crowns. Upon the

straw hat they place a little cushion, and in this manner carry easily

and conveniently very heavy burdens. The Corsican, like the Italian

women, are distinguished by natural grace of deportment. I had frequent

occasion to be delighted with the ease and grace of their movements.

One day I met a young woman carrying fruit to the town. I requested

her to sell me some. The maiden immediately removed her basket from her

head, and, with the most perfect grace, requested me to take as much as

I wished. With equal delicacy, she declined my offer of money. She was

very poorly dressed. Afterwards, every time I met her in Ajaccio she

returned my salutation with a grace which would have well become a lady

of the noblest birth.

A man gallops past me. His pretty little wife has perhaps just gone

before him, laden with a bundle of brushwood or fodder, while her

indolent husband has come from the mountains, where he has been doing

nothing all day but waiting for an opportunity to shoot some mortal

enemy. When I see these half savages alone, or in companies of three

or six, on horseback or on foot, all armed with their double-barrelled

guns, I can hardly persuade myself that the country is not permanently

in a state of war. Even the peasant, who sits on his hay-cart, has his

gun slung upon his shoulder. I counted in half an hour twenty-six men

armed with double-barrelled guns, who passed me on their way to Ajaccio.

The people in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio are known to be the most

quarrelsome in the island.

The appearance of these men is often bold and picturesque; often, too,

frightfully hideous, and even ridiculous. You see them on their small

horses, men of short stature—generally about Napoleon's height—with

jet-black hair and beard, deep bronze complexion, in brownish-black

jacket of a shaggy material, trowsers of the same sort, their

double-barrelled gun on their shoulder, the round yellow zucca—usually

filled with water—strapped to their back, the pouch of goat-skin

or fox-skin, stuffed with bread, cheese, and other necessaries, the

shot-belt buckled round the waist, with the leathern tobacco-pouch

attached. Thus is the Corsican horseman equipped; and thus he lies

all day in the field, while his wife is hard at work. I could never

repress a feeling of annoyance and disgust when I saw these furious

fellows—two generally on one horse, spurring him on unmercifully—pass me

at a gallop, and turned to look upon the beautiful shores of the gulf,

where not a single village is visible. The soil might produce a hundred

kinds of fruit, while at present it is overgrown with rosemary, thorns,

thistles, and wild olives.

The walk along the shore, on the north side of the bay, is delightful.

It is a pleasure, during the prevalence of a light breeze, to watch

the waves breaking upon the granite reefs, and covering them with their

pure white foam. On the right rise mountains, which, near the town, are

covered with olive-trees, but beyond, and as far as Cape Muro, are bleak

and desert.

On this part of the coast stands, close to the sea, the small

Greek chapel. I have not been able to discover why it bears this

name—dedicated as it is to the Madonna del Carmine, and bearing

a tablet with the name of the family of Pozzo di Borgo—_Puteo

Borgensis_—inscribed upon it. It was probably ceded to the Greeks on

their arrival at Ajaccio. The Genoese had settled the colony of Mainotes

at Paomia, which lies a considerable distance above Ajaccio. These

industrious colonists were continually threatened by the Corsicans.

Hating and despising the intruders—whose settlement had flourished in a

remarkable degree—they stabbed the husbandman at the plough, shot the

vine-dresser in his vineyard, and laid waste the fields and gardens.

In the year 1731, the poor Greeks were expelled from their settlement;

they fled to Ajaccio, where they were quartered by the Genoese, to

whom they had always remained faithful, in three separate divisions of

the town. When the island fell into the hands of the French, they were

allowed to settle in Cargese. They brought this part of the country into

a high state of cultivation, but had hardly time to become properly

domesticated before the Corsicans again fell upon them, in the year

1793, set fire to their houses, slaughtered their cattle, destroyed

their vineyards, and forced them to flee once more to Ajaccio. In 1797,

General Casabianca led the poor wanderers back to Cargese, where they

now live in peace and safety. All peculiarities in their manners and

customs have disappeared; they speak Corsican, like their troublesome

neighbours, and among themselves a corrupt kind of Greek. Cargese lies

on the sea, north from Ajaccio, and not far from the baths of Vico and

Guagno.

On the same part of the coast are scattered many small chapels, in

various forms—round, polygonal, with and without cupolas, and some

in the shape of sarcophagi and temples, surrounded by white walls,

and overhung with cypresses and weeping willows. These are the

country-houses of the dead—family burying-places. Their situation on

the sea-shore, in sight of the beautiful gulf, standing, too, among

green trees and shrubs, and the elegant Moorish style in which they are

built, give a very pleasant and romantic appearance to the country. The

Corsican has strong antipathies to being buried in a public churchyard;

he follows the ancient custom of the patriarchs, and prefers to rest

with his fathers on his own possessions. Thus the whole island is

covered with small tombs, often in the most beautiful situations, and

heightening greatly the picturesque appearance of the landscape.

Walking further on towards Cape Muro, where the traveller sees, close to

the shore, several red granite cliffs—the Bloody Islands, as they are

called—on which stand a lighthouse and several Genoese watch-towers, I

found some fishermen engaged in drawing a net to land. They stood in

rows of from ten to twelve men, each company pulling in a long rope,

to which the net was fastened. These ropes are more than a hundred and

fifty yards long on each side; the part pulled in is neatly and cleverly

arranged in a round coil. In three-quarters of an hour the net was on

shore, heavy with fish. When they spread it out on the beach, such a

spluttering, and leaping, and bounding, and springing! The fish were

mostly anchovies, the largest were ray-fish (_razza_), very similar to

our Baltic flinder. They carry a sharp and painful sting at the end

of their long tails. The fishermen lay the ray-fish very carefully

on the ground, and sever the tail from the body with a knife. They

were an industrious and active body of men, of a powerful build; for

the Corsicans are as active and useful on sea as among their native

mountains. The old granite mountains and the sea develop and determine,

on the one side and on the other, the character of the island and

its population; and thus the Corsicans are naturally divided into two

powerful bodies—herdsmen and fishermen. The fishery in the neighbourhood

of Ajaccio is, as in all the bays of the island, of great importance.

In April, the tunny coasts along the shores of Spain, France, and Genoa,

and makes its appearance in the Corsican channel; the shark is its sworn

enemy. It also is often seen in these seas, but it does not come near

the shore.

Returning in the twilight from this sea-side walk to Ajaccio, the

report of a gun at no great distance among the hills, struck my ear.

Presently a man came running up to me and inquired in an excited manner:

"You heard the shot?" "Yes." "Did you see any one?" "No." He then left

me. Two sbirri passed. "What was it?" I inquired. "Some one has been

murdered, we suppose." A walk in the country may be diversified in

this island by somewhat dramatic occurrences. Death breathes around one

everywhere, and the beauty of Nature herself has here the sad charm of

melancholy and gloom.

FOOTNOTES:

[M] This is incorrect.

[N] An allusion to the fact that Napoleon's wish to be buried on

the banks of the Seine was not complied with.—_Tr._

BOOK IX.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

FROM AJACCIO TO THE VALLEY OF ORNANO.

The road from Ajaccio to Sartene is rich in remarkable scenery and

peculiar landscape. It runs for a time along the Gulf of Ajaccio,

crosses the river Gravone, which falls into the gulf, and winds through

the valley of the Prunelli. From all sides the view of the gulf is

magnificent, at times unseen, at other times reappearing, as the road

pursues its spiral windings among the mountains.

At the mouth of the Prunelli stands the solitary tower of Capitello,

with which the history of Napoleon has made us acquainted.

The towns in this part of the country are but few in number: they are

called Fontanaccia, Serrola, and Cavro. Cavro is a paese, consisting of

several distinct hamlets, in a wild and romantic mountainous country,

rich in granite and porphyry, and interspersed with the most luxuriant

vineyards. Ten minutes' walk into this mountainous region of Cavro

brings us to the scene of the treacherous assassination of Sampiero. The

Ornanos chose their place well. There, in a circle, stand high rocks,

down the side of which winds a narrow path into the gorge, through

which a mountain stream flows, while around grow oaks, olive-trees,

and brushwood. On a rock near the place are still visible the ruins

of Castle Giglio, where Sampiero spent the night before his death. I

looked around in vain for some memorial which might inform the wanderer

that in this gloomy spot the most heroic of all Corsicans met his fate.

This, too, is a characteristic trait of the Corsican nation; the living

memory of the people is the only monument of their wild tragic history.

Every rock in the island is a memorial stone; and the Corsicans may

well dispense with monumental pillars and tablets, so long as the great

events of their history continue to form a living element of their own

being. For, when a people begin to decorate their land with statues and

with monuments, it is a sure sign that their primeval power is gone.

The whole of Italy is at present a mere museum of monuments, statues,

and inscriptions; while in Corsica, nature continues to reign, and

living tradition has lost none of its power. Indeed, the Corsicans

would not even understand the meaning of a statue or a monument; such

a thing would appear to them strange and foreign. When a statue—which

he declined—was voted to Pasquale Paoli, after his return from England,

a Corsican remarked: "As well give an honest man a box on the ear, as

offer him a statue."

Near this gloomy spot, however, stood a group of living monuments of

the greatness of Sampiero—peasants, with the Phrygian cap of freedom

pressed down upon their brows, talking together in the sun. I went

up to them, and entered into conversation with them about their old

national hero. The people have conferred upon him the most honourable

agnomen that could be borne by the son of any nation; for he is never

mentioned by any other than Sampiero Corso—Sampiero the Corsican. In a

striking manner has the judgment of his countrymen been pronounced in

this name—that Sampiero is himself the most complete expression of the

character of the Corsican people, and a symbol of the nation's power

and greatness. This great man, hewn from the primeval granite of his

country, is the perfect representative of the character of the island

as of its history—rude valour, unconquerable obstinacy, a glowing love

of freedom, patriotism, a penetrating sagacity, poverty without its

wants, roughness and violent passion, volcanic emotions, thirst for

revenge—leading him even like Othello to murder his wife; and, that

no bloody trait (and bloodthirstiness is a remarkable psychological

characteristic of the Corsican nationality) in the history of Sampiero

Corso may be wanting, we find the completion of the picture in his own

violent death. Living several centuries ago, his character could embrace

within itself every element of the Corsican nature. The same traits are

observable in Pasquale Paoli, but, from the philosophical and humanistic

character of the century in which he lived, their manifestations are

not so intense nor so peculiarly national.

The eldest of Sampiero's sons continued the war against the Genoese for

some time after his father's death, but afterwards emigrated. In the

year 1570, Catherine de' Medici appointed him colonel of the Corsican

regiment which she had taken into her service. He distinguished himself

by his courage in many battles and sieges, under Charles IX. and Henry

III. After the murder of Henry, under whom he had been governor of

Dauphiné, the League exerted themselves to draw over the influential

Corsican to their side; but Alfonso was among the first who acknowledged

the claims of Henry IV., and became one of the most powerful supports

of his throne. The king created him Marshal of France, and rewarded

the fidelity of the hero with his personal friendship. Henry thus

writes to Alfonso: "Dear Cousin—Your despatch, delivered to me by M.

de Tour, has given me the earliest information with regard to your

successful exertions in my town of Romans. By God's grace, few, if any

evil consequences have followed from these wicked plots; and, next to

him, there is no one who deserves greater praise in this affair than

yourself, for you have acted with unparalleled skill and courage.

Receive my best thanks. Your present exertions are but the continuation

of your usual decided style of action, and they have been attended with

the success which always accompanies your endeavours." In the year

1594, Alfonso took Lyons, Vienne, and several towns in Provence and

Dauphiné. He was the terror of the anti-royalists; and, honoured and

feared for his military genius, he was equally beloved and respected

for his uprightness and benevolence. Several French towns, ruined by

the plague and the severities of war, were assisted by Alfonso from his

own private purse. He died at Paris in 1610, at the age of sixty-two,

and was buried in the Church de la Merci at Bordeaux. By his wife,

a daughter of Nicolas de Ponteveze, lord of Flassau, he had several

children; and one of his sons, Jean Baptiste d'Ornano, likewise rose to

the dignity of Marshal of France. His fall, in the period of Richelieu's

government, was occasioned by certain court intrigues; the minister

threw him into the Bastille, where he died by poison—administered, it

is said, by Richelieu's orders—in 1618. In the year 1670, the line of

Sampiero's family, which had made its first appearance in France with

Alfonso, became extinct.

His second son, Antonio Francesco d'Ornano, met, like his father,

a violent end. It was he with whom the unhappy Vannina fled from

Marseilles to Genoa, and who was with her when she was murdered by

her enraged husband. Antonio Francesco lived, like his brother, at

the court of France. Young, of a fiery temperament, and with a strong

desire to see the world, he sought and obtained leave to accompany the

ambassador of Henry III. to Rome. One day, at cards, a quarrel arose

between him and some French gentlemen of the embassy, among whom one

M. de la Roggia took the lead. The impetuous Corsican let fall some

insulting words; but the Frenchman restrained his anger and concealed

his desire for revenge, and the youthful Ornano suspected nothing. A

riding-party was soon after formed for a visit to the Colosseum. Here

Ornano, after his Italian friends had left him, remained alone with his

servant and twelve Frenchmen, half of the number on horseback, and half

on foot. M. de la Roggia invited him to dismount and accompany him into

the Colosseum. Ornano agreed; but had hardly dismounted from his horse,

before the treacherous Frenchmen—those who were mounted as well as

those on foot—fell upon him. Though bleeding from several wounds, Ornano

defended himself against this unequal force with heroic courage. Setting

his back to a pillar of the Colosseum, he made a bold and vigorous stand

with his sword, till he was overpowered and fell. The murderers fled,

leaving him weltering in his blood. Mortally wounded, he was carried

to his own house, where he died on the following day. This event took

place in the year 1580. He was never married, and left no descendants.

I visited the tomb of this the youngest son of Sampiero, in the Church

of San Chrysogono, in the Trastevere at Rome, where he lies buried, with

many other Corsican gentlemen. San Chrysogono is a church belonging

to the Corsicans, having been ceded to them several centuries ago,

when numerous fugitives from the island settled in Ostia, and upon

Tiber-Borgo. Antonio Francesco d'Ornano is said to have been the perfect

image of his father; and it is added, that, in addition to his face and

form, he possessed also his intrepidity—a virtue for which Sampiero was

as celebrated as the Roman Fabricius. History informs us that Pyrrhus

plotted to terrify this great general by the sudden appearance of an

elephant; and there is a tradition that the Sultan Solyman tried a

like experiment with Sampiero. The story goes that one day the Grand

Seignior wished to discover for himself whether the accounts he had

heard of Sampiero's intrepidity were exaggerated or not. Accordingly,

when Sampiero was seated at table with him, one of his attendants, who

had received proper instructions, fired off a two-pound cannon under the

table, the moment the Corsican hero was about to drink from the goblet

of wine he had carried to his lips. All eyes were turned upon him.

Not a feature of his countenance altered; and the shot made no greater

impression on him than the noise of a cup falling.

Further north from Cavro lies the large canton of Bastelica, separated

by a chain of mountains from the canton of Zicavo. This rugged

and mountainous country, piled up with immense masses of granite,

interspersed with wild valleys shaded by the knotty oak-tree, and hemmed

in by the snow-capped peaks of giant mountains, is the fatherland of

Sampiero. In Bastelica, or rather in the little village of Dominicaccia,

they still show the dark gloomy house in which he was born; his own

dwelling was pulled down by the Genoese under Stephen Doria. He is

well remembered in this district, and the imagination of the people has

consecrated many a natural memorial of his life and deeds. Here it is a

foot-mark of the hero in the rock—here the impression of his gun—here

a cave, or an oak-tree under which he rested and ate. The inhabitants

of this valley are distinguished for their powerful frames and warlike

appearance. They are mostly herdsmen—rude natures, with the iron

manners of their forefathers, and completely untouched by culture or

civilisation. The inhabitants of the cantons of Bastelica and Morosaglia

are considered the most powerful men in Corsica—curiously enough, since

they are the brothers of Sampiero and Paoli, both of whom were veritable

men of the people, without titles and without ancestry.

The mountain-ridge of San Giorgio divides the valley of Prunelli

from the broad valley of the Taravo. After passing the crest of the

mountain—the Bocca, as it is called—the traveller's eye falls upon two

beautiful mountain-valleys thickly studded with hamlets and villages—the

valleys of Istria and Ornano. The river Taravo flows through them

in a very rocky channel. My memory in vain seeks for some well-known

region of Italy, to illustrate to the reader the character of these

Corsican valleys. Many parts of the Apennines are somewhat similar.

But these Corsican mountains and valleys, with their chestnut-groves,

their dark-brown rock-walls, their foaming streams, their black and

scattered villages, appeared to me far more sublime, far wilder and more

picturesque than any Italian scenery; and, when suddenly the distant

shining sea broke upon the view, the scene was not to be compared with

the landscape of any other country in the world.

In these mountains dwelt the old noble families of Istria and Ornano,

the head of whom local tradition declares to have been Hugo Colonna;

the same whom I have mentioned in my history of the island. Many a tower

and ruined castle still attest, but in uncertain accents, the glory of

their rule. The chief cantons of this district are those of Santa Maria

and Petreto.

In Santa Maria d'Ornano was the seat of the Ornanos. Originally the

pieve went by the name of Ornano, but it is now called Santa Maria.

The country around is beautiful, with green smiling hills, broad rich

pastures, and thick olive-groves. This was the native land of the fair

Vannina; and here still stands the tall, brown, castellated house where

she lived, picturesquely situated on a height commanding the valley. Not

far from this house are still to be seen the ruins of a castle, built

by Sampiero, with a chapel near it, in which he heard mass. It is said,

however, that he never went to the chapel, but contented himself with

sitting at a window of the castle when mass was being read. It was built

in the year 1554.