After Pasquale Paoli and his brother Clemens, with their companions, had left Corsica, the French easily made themselves masters of the whole island. Only a few straggling guerilla bands protracted the struggle a while longer among the mountains. Among these, one noble patriot especially deserves the love and admiration of future times—the poor parish priest of Guagno—Domenico Leca, of the old family of Giampolo. He had sworn upon the Gospels to abide true to freedom, and to die sooner than give up the struggle. When the whole country had submitted, and the enemy summoned him to lay down his arms, he declared that he could not violate his oath. He dismissed those of his people that did not wish any longer to follow him, and threw himself, with a faithful few, into the hills. For months he continued the struggle, fighting, however, only when he was attacked, and tending wounded foes with Christian compassion when they fell into his hands. He inflicted injury on none except in honourable conflict. In vain the French called on him to come down, and live unmolested in his village. The priest of Guagno wandered among the mountains, for he was resolved to be free; and when all had forsaken him, the goat-herds gave him shelter and sustenance. But one day he was found dead in a cave, whence he had gone home to his Master, weary and careworn, and a free man. A relative of Paoli and friend of Alfieri—Giuseppe Ottaviano Savelli—has celebrated the memory of the priest of Guagno in a Latin poem, with the title of Vir Nemoris—The Man of the Forest.

Other Corsicans, too, who had gone into exile to Italy, landed here and there, and attempted, like their forefathers, Vincentello, Renuccio, Giampolo, and Sampiero, to free the island. None of these attempts met with any success. Many Corsicans were barbarously dragged off to prison—many sent to the galleys at Toulon, as if they had been helots who had revolted against their masters. Abattucci, who had been one of the last to lay down arms, falsely accused of high treason and convicted, was condemned in Bastia to branding and the galleys. When Abattucci was sitting upon the scaffold ready to endure the execution of the sentence, the executioner shrank from applying the red-hot iron. "Do your duty," cried a French judge; the man turned round to the latter, and stretched the iron towards him, as if about to brand the judge. Some time after, Abattucci was pardoned.

Meanwhile, Count Marbœuf had succeeded the Count de Vaux in the command of Corsica. His government was on the whole mild and beneficial; the ancient civic regulations of the Corsicans, and their statutes, remained in force; the Council of Twelve was restored, and the administration of justice rendered more efficient. Efforts were also made to animate agriculture, and the general industry of the now utterly impoverished country. Marbœuf died in Bastia in 1786, after governing Corsica for sixteen years.

When the French Revolution broke out, that mighty movement absorbed all private interests of the Corsicans, and these ardent lovers of liberty threw themselves with enthusiasm into the current of the new time. The Corsican deputy, Saliceti, proposed that the island should be incorporated with France, in order that it might share in her constitution. This took place, in terms of a decree of the Legislative Assembly, on the 30th of November 1789, and excited universal exultation throughout Corsica. Most singular and contradictory was the turn affairs had taken. The same France, that twenty years before had sent out her armies to annihilate the liberties and the constitution of Corsica, now raised that constitution upon her throne!

The Revolution recalled Paoli from his exile. He had gone first to Tuscany, and thereafter to London, where the court and ministers had given him an honourable reception. He lived very retired in London, and little was heard of his life or his employment. Paoli made no stir when he came to England; the great man who had led the van for Europe on her new career, withdrew into silence and obscurity in his little house in Oxford Street. He made no magniloquent speeches. All he could do was to act like a man, and, when that was no longer permitted him, be proudly silent. The scholar of Corte had said in his presence, in the oration from which I have quoted: "If freedom were to be gained by mere talking, then were the whole world free." Something might be learned from the wisdom of this young student. When Napoleon, like a genuine Corsican, taking refuge as a last resource in an appeal to hospitality, claimed that of England from on board the Bellerophon, he compared himself to Themistocles when in the position of a suppliant for protection. He was not entitled to compare himself with the great citizen of Greece; Pasquale Paoli alone was that exiled Themistocles!

Here are one or two letters of this period:—

Paoli had lived twenty long years an exile in London, when he was summoned back to his native country. The Corsicans sent him a deputation, and the French National Assembly, in a pompous address, invited him to return.

On the 3d of April 1790, Paoli came for the first time to Paris. He was fêted here as the Washington of Europe, and Lafayette was constantly at his side. The National Assembly received him with stormy acclamations, and elaborate oratory. His reply was as follows:—

"Messieurs, this is the fairest and happiest day of my life. I have spent my years in striving after liberty, and I find here its noblest spectacle. I left my country in slavery, I find it now in freedom. What more remains for me to desire? After an absence of twenty years, I know not what alterations tyranny may have produced among my countrymen; ah! it cannot have been otherwise than fatal, for oppression demoralizes. But in removing, as you have done, the chains from the Corsicans, you have restored to them their ancient virtue. Now that I am returning to my native country, you need entertain no doubts as to the nature of my sentiments. You have been magnanimous towards me, and I was never a slave. My past conduct, which you have honoured with your approval, is the pledge of my future course of action: my whole life, I may say, has been an unbroken oath to liberty; it seems, therefore, as if I had already sworn allegiance to the constitution which you have established; but it still remains for me to give my oath to the nation which adopts me, and to the monarch whom I now acknowledge. This is the favour which I desire of the august Assembly."

In the club of the Friends of the Constitution, Robespierre thus addressed Paoli: "Ah! there was a time when we sought to crush freedom in its last retreats. Yet no! that was the crime of despotism—the French people have wiped away the stain. What ample atonement to conquered Corsica, and injured mankind! Noble citizens, you defended liberty at a time when I did not so much as venture to hope for it. You have suffered for liberty; you now triumph with it, and your triumph is ours. Let us unite to preserve it for ever, and may its base opponents turn pale with fear at the sight of our sacred league."

Paoli had no foreboding of the position into which the course of events was yet to bring him, in relation to this same France, or that he was once more to stand opposed to her as a foe. He left for Corsica. In Marseilles he was again received by a Corsican deputation, with the members of which came the two young club-leaders of Ajaccio—Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte. Paoli wept as he landed on Cape Corso and kissed the soil of his native country; he was conducted in triumph from canton to canton; and the Te Deum was sung throughout the island.

Paoli, as President of the Assembly, and Lieutenant-general of the Corsican National Guard, now devoted himself entirely to the affairs of his country; in the year 1791 he also undertook the command of the Division, and of the island. Although the French Revolution had silenced the special interests of the Corsicans, they began again to demand attention, and this was particularly felt by Paoli, among whose virtues patriotism was always uppermost. Paoli could never transform himself into a Frenchman, or forget that his people had possessed independence, and its own constitution. A coolness sprang up between him and certain parties in the island; the aristocratic French party, namely, on the one hand, composed of such men as Gaffori, Rossi, Peretti, and Buttafuoco; and the extreme democrats on the other, who saw the welfare of the world nowhere but in the whirl of the French Revolution, such as the Bonapartes, Saliceti, and Arenas.

The execution of the king, and the wild and extravagant procedure of the popular leaders in Paris, shocked the philanthropic Paoli. He gradually broke with France, and the rupture became manifest after the unsuccessful French expedition from Corsica against Sardinia, the failure of which was attributed to Paoli. His opponents had lodged a formal accusation against him and Pozzo di Borgo, the Procurator-general, libelling them as Particularists, who wished to separate the island from France.

The Convention summoned him to appear before its bar and answer the accusations, and sent Saliceti, Lacombe, and Delcher, as commissaries to the island. Paoli, however, refused to obey the decree, and sent a dignified and firm address to the Convention, in which he repelled the imputations made upon him, and complained of their forcing a judicial investigation upon an aged man, and a martyr for freedom. Was a Paoli to stand in a court composed of windy declaimers and play-actors, and then lay his head, grown gray in heroism, beneath the knife of the guillotine? Was this to be the end of a life that had produced such noble fruits?

The result of this refusal to obey the orders of the Convention, was the complete revolt of Paoli and the Paolists from France. The patriots prepared for a struggle, and published such enactments as plainly intimated that they wished Corsica to be considered as separated from France. The commissaries hastened home to Paris; and after receiving their report, the Convention declared Paoli guilty of high treason, and placed him beyond the protection of the law. The island was split into two hostile camps, the patriots and the republicans, and already fighting had commenced.

Meanwhile Paoli had formed the plan of placing the island under the protection of the English Government. No course lay nearer or was more natural than this. He had already entered into communication with Admiral Hood, who commanded the English fleet before Toulon, and now with his ships appeared on the Corsican coast. He landed near Fiorenzo on the 2d of February. This fortress fell after a severe bombardment; and the commandant of Bastia, General Antonio Gentili, capitulated. Calvi alone, which had withstood in previous centuries so many assaults, still held out, though the English bombs made frightful havoc in the little town, and all but reduced it to a heap of ruins. At length, on the 20th of July 1794, the fortress surrendered; the commandant, Casabianca, capitulated, and embarked with his troops for France. As Bonifazio and Ajaccio were already in the hands of the Paolists, the Republicans could no longer maintain a footing on the island. They emigrated, and Paoli and the English remained undisputed masters of Corsica.

A general assembly now declared the island completely severed from France, and placed it under the protection of England. England, however, did not content herself with a mere right of protection—she claimed the sovereignty of Corsica; and this became the occasion of a rupture between Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo, whom Sir Gilbert Elliot had won for the English side. On the 10th of June 1794, the Corsicans declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain; that it was, however, to remain independent, and be governed by a viceroy according to its own constitution.

Paoli had counted on the English king's naming him viceroy; but he was deceived, for Gilbert Elliot was sent to Corsica in this capacity—a serious blunder, since Elliot was totally unacquainted with the condition of the island, and his appointment could not but deeply wound Paoli.

The gray-haired man immediately withdrew into private life; and as Elliot saw that his relation to the English, already unpleasant, must soon become dangerous, he wrote to George III. that the removal of Pasquale was desirable. This was accomplished. The King of England, in a friendly letter, invited Paoli to come to London, and spend his remaining days in honour at the court. Paoli was in his own house at Morosaglia when he received the letter. Sadly he now proceeded to San Fiorenzo, where he embarked, and left his country for the third and last time, in October 1795. The great man shared the same fate as most of the legislators and popular leaders of antiquity; he died rewarded with ingratitude, unhappy, and in exile. The two greatest men of Corsica, Pasquale and Napoleon, foes to each other, were both to end their days and be buried on British territory.

The English government of Corsica—from ignorance of the country very badly conducted—lasted only a short time. As soon as Napoleon found himself victorious in Italy, he despatched Generals Gentili and Casalta with troops to the island; and scarcely had they made their appearance, when the Corsicans, imbittered by the banishment of Paoli and their other grievances, rose against the English. In almost inexplicable haste they relinquished the island, from whose people they were separated by wide and ineradicable differences in national character; and by November 1796, not a single Englishman remained in Corsica. The island was now again under the supremacy of France.

Pasquale Paoli lived to see Napoleon Emperor. Fate granted him at least the satisfaction of seeing a countryman of his own the most prominent and the most powerful actor in European history. After passing twelve years more of exile in London, he died peacefully on the 5th of February 1807, at the age of eighty-two, his mind to the last occupied with thoughts of the people whom he had so warmly loved. He was the patriarch and oldest legislator of European liberty. In his last letter to his friend Padovani, the noble old man, reviewing his life, says humbly:—

"I have lived long enough; and if it were granted me to begin my life anew, I should reject the gift, unless it were accompanied with the intelligent cognisance of my past life, that I might repair the errors and follies by which it has been marked."

One of the Corsican exiles announced his death to his countrymen in the following letter:—

CHAPTER IX.

PAOLI'S BIRTHPLACE.

It was late when I reached Rostino, or Morosaglia. Under this name is understood, not a single paese, but a number of villages scattered among the rude, stern hills. I found my way with difficulty through these little neighbour hamlets to the convent of Morosaglia, climbing rough paths over rocks, and again descending under gigantic chestnuts. A locanda stands opposite the convent, a rare phenomenon in the country districts of Corsica. I found there a lively and intelligent young man, who informed me he was director of the Paoli School, and promised me his assistance for the following day.

In the morning, I went to the little village of Stretta, where the three Paolis were born. One must see this Casa Paoli in order rightly to comprehend the history of the Corsicans, and award a just admiration to these singular men. The house is a very wretched, black, village-cabin, standing on a granite rock; a brooklet runs immediately past the door; it is a rude structure of stone, with narrow apertures in the walls, such as are seen in towers; the windows few, unsymmetrically disposed, unglazed, with wooden shutters, as in the time of Pasquale. When the Corsicans had elected him their general, and he was expected home from Naples, Clemens had glass put in the windows of the sitting-room, in order to make the parental abode somewhat more comfortable for his brother. But Paoli had no sooner entered and remarked the luxurious alteration, than he broke every pane with his stick, saying that he did not mean to live in his father's house like a Duke, but like a born Corsican. The windows still remain without glass; the eye overlooks from them the magnificent panorama of the mountains of Niolo, as far as the towering Monte Rotondo.

A relative of Paoli's—a simple country girl of the Tommasi family—took me into the house. Everything in it wears the stamp of humble peasant life. You mount a steep wooden stair to the mean rooms, in which Paoli's wooden table and wooden seat still stand. With joy, I saw myself in the little chamber in which Pasquale was born; my emotions on this spot were more lively and more agreeable than in the birth-chamber of Napoleon.

Once more that fine face, with its classic, grave, and dignified features, rose before me, and along with it the forms of a noble father and a heroic brother. In this little room Pasquale came to the world in April of the year 1724. His mother was Dionisia Valentina, an excellent woman from a village near Ponte Nuovo—the spot so fatal to her son. His father, Hyacinth, we know already. He had been a physician, and became general of the Corsicans along with Ceccaldi and Giafferi. He was distinguished by exalted virtues, and was worthy of the renown that attaches to his name as the father of two such sons. Hyacinth had great oratorical powers, and some reputation as a poet. Amid the din of arms those powerful spirits had still time and genial force enough to rise free above the actual circumstances of their condition, and sing war-hymns, like Tyrtæus.

Here is a sonnet addressed by Hyacinth to the brave Giafferi, after the battle of Borgo:—

Such men are as if moulded of Greek bronze. They are the men of Plutarch, and resemble Aristides, Epaminondas, and Timoleon. They could resign themselves to privation, and sacrifice their interests and their lives; they were simple, sincere, stout-hearted citizens of their country. They had become great by facts, not by theories, and the high nobility of their principles had a basis, positive and real, in their actions and experiences. If we are to express the entire nature of these men in one word, that word is Virtue, and they were worthy of virtue's fairest reward—Freedom.

My glance falls upon the portrait of Pasquale. I could not wish to imagine him otherwise. His head is large and regular; his brow arched and high, the hair long and flowing; his eyebrows bushy, falling a little down into the eyes, as if swift to contract and frown; but the blue eyes are luminous, large, and free—full of clear, perceptive intellect; and an air of gentleness, dignity, and benevolence, pervades the beardless, open countenance.

One of my greatest pleasures is to look at portraits and busts of great men. Four periods of these attract and reward our examination most—the heads of Greece; the Roman heads; the heads of the great fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and the heads of the eighteenth century. It would be an almost endless labour to arrange by themselves the busts of the great men of the eighteenth century; but such a Museum would richly reward the trouble. When I see a certain group of these together, it seems to me as if I recognised a family resemblance prevailing in it—a resemblance arising from the presence in each, of one and the same spiritual principle—Pasquale, Washington, Franklin, Vico, Genovesi, Filangieri, Herder, Pestalozzi, Lessing.

Pasquale's head is strikingly like that of Alfieri. Although the latter, like Byron, aristocratic, proud, and unbendingly egotistic, widely differs in many respects from his contemporary, Pasquale—the peaceful, philanthrophic citizen; he had nevertheless a soul full of a marvellous energy, and burning with the hatred of tyranny. He could understand such a nature as Paoli's better than Frederick the Great. Frederick once sent to this house a present for Paoli—a sword bearing the inscription, Libertas, Patria. Away in distant Prussia, the great king took Pasquale for an unusually able soldier. He was no soldier; his brother Clemens was his sword; he was the thinking head—a citizen and a strong and high-hearted man. Alfieri comprehended him better, he dedicated his Timoleon to him, and sent him the poem with this letter:—

Alfieri inscribed on the copy of his tragedy which he sent to Pasquale, the following verses:—

Alfieri exhibited much delicacy of perception in dedicating the Timoleon to Paoli—the tragedy of a republican, who had once, in the neighbouring Sicily, given wise democratic laws to a liberated people, and then died as a private citizen. Plutarch was a favourite author with Paoli, as with most of the great men of the eighteenth century, and Epaminondas was his favourite hero; the two were kindred natures—both despised pomp and expensive living, and did not imagine that their patriotic services and endeavours were incompatible with the outward style of citizens and commoners. Pasquale was fond of reading: he had a choice library, and his memory was retentive. An old man told me that once, when as a boy he was walking along the road with a school-fellow, and reciting a passage from Virgil, Paoli accidentally came up behind him, slapped him on the shoulder, and proceeded himself with the passage.

Many particulars of Paoli's habits are still remembered by the people here. The old men have seen him walking about under these chestnuts, in a long green, gold-laced coat,[N] and a vest of brown Corsican cloth. When he showed himself, he was always surrounded by his peasantry, whom he treated as equals. He was accessible to all, and he maintained a lively recollection of an occasion when he had deeply to repent his having shut himself up for an hour. It was one day during the last struggle for independence; he was in Sollacaro, embarrassed with an accumulation of business, and had ordered the sentry to allow no one admission. After some time a woman appeared, accompanied by an armed youth. The woman was in mourning, wrapped in the faldetta, and wore round her neck a black ribbon, to which a Moor's head, in silver—the Corsican arms—was attached. She attempted to enter—the sentry repelled her. Paoli, hearing a noise, opened the door, and demanded hastily and imperiously what she wanted. The woman said with mournful calmness: "Signor, be so good as listen to me. I was the mother of two sons; the one fell at the Tower of Girolata; the other stands here. I come to give him to his country, that he may supply the place of his dead brother." She turned to the youth, and said to him: "My son, do not forget that you are more your country's child than mine." The woman went away. Paoli stood a moment as if thunderstruck; then he sprang after her, embraced with emotion mother and son, and introduced them to his officers. Paoli said afterwards that he never felt so embarrassed as before that noble-hearted woman.

He never married; his people were his family. His only niece, the daughter of his brother Clemens, was married to a Corsican called Barbaggi. But Paoli himself, capable of all the virtues of friendship, was not without a noble female friend, a woman of talent and glowing patriotism, to whom the greatest men of the country confided their political ideas and plans. This Corsican Roland, however, kept no salon; she was a nun, of the noble house of Rivarola. A single circumstance evinces the ardent sympathy of this nun for the patriotic struggles of her countrymen; after Achille Murati's bold conquest of Capraja, she herself, in her exultation at the success of the enterprise, went over to the island, as if to take possession of it in the name of Paoli. Many of Pasquale's letters are addressed to the Signora Monaca, and are altogether occupied with politics, as if they had been written to a man.

The incredible activity of Paoli appears from his collected letters. The talented Italian Tommaseo (at present living in exile in Corfu) has published a large volume containing the most important of these. They are highly interesting, and exhibit a manly, vigorous, and clear intellect. Paoli disliked writing—he dictated, like Napoleon; he could not sit long, his continually active mind allowed him no rest. It is said of him that he never knew the date; that he could read the future, and that he frequently had visions.

Paoli's memory is very sacred with his people. Napoleon elates the soul of the Corsican with pride, because he was his brother; but when you name the name of Paoli, his eye brightens like that of a son, at the mention of a noble departed father. It is impossible for a man to be more loved and honoured by a whole nation after his death than Pasquale Paoli; and if posthumous fame is a second life, then Corsica's and Italy's greatest man of the eighteenth century lives a thousandfold—yes, lives in every Corsican heart, from the tottering graybeard who knew him in his youth, to the child on whose soul his high example is impressed. No greater name can be given to a man than "Father of his country." Flattery has often abused it and made it ridiculous; among the Corsicans I saw that it could also be applied with truth and justice.

Paoli contrasts with Napoleon, as philanthropy with self-love. No curses of the dead rise to execrate his name. At the nod of Napoleon, millions of human beings were murdered for the sake of fame and power. The blood that Paoli shed, flowed for freedom, and his country gave it freely as that mother-bird that wounds her breast to give her fainting brood to drink.

No battle-field makes Paoli's name illustrious; but his memory is here honoured by the foundation-school of Morosaglia, and this fame seems to me more human and more beautiful than the fame of Marengo or the Pyramids.

I visited this school, the bequest of the noble patriot. The old convent supplies an edifice. It consists of two classes; the lower containing one hundred and fifty scholars, the upper about forty. But two teachers are insufficient for the large number of pupils. The rector of the lower class was so friendly as to hold a little examination in my presence. I here again remarked the naïveté of the Corsican character, as displayed by the boys. There were upwards of a hundred, between the ages of six and fourteen, separated into divisions, wild, brown little fellows, tattered and torn, unwashed, all with their caps on their heads. Some wore crosses of honour suspended on red ribbons; and these looked comical enough on the breasts of the little brown rascals—sitting, perhaps, with their heads supported between their two fists, and staring, frank and free, with their black eyes at all within range—proud, probably, of being Paoli scholars. These honours are distributed every Saturday, and worn by the pupil for a week; a silly, and at the same time, hurtful French practice, which tends to encourage bad passions, and to drive the Corsican—in whom nature has already implanted an unusual thirst for distinction—even in his boyhood, to a false ambition. These young Spartans were reading Telemachus. On my requesting the rector to allow them to translate the French into Italian, that I might see how they were at home in their mother-tongue, he excused himself with the express prohibition of the Government, which "does not permit Italian in the schools." The branches taught were writing, reading, arithmetic, and the elements of geography and biblical history.

The schoolroom of the lower class is the chapter-hall of the old convent in which Clemens Paoli dreamed away the closing days of his life. Such a spacious, airy Aula as that in which these Corsican youngsters pursue their studies, with the view from its windows of the mighty hills of Niolo, and the battle-fields of their sires, would be an improvement in many a German university. The heroic grandeur of external nature in Corsica seems to me to form, along with the recollections of their past history, the great source of cultivation for the Corsican people; and there is no little importance in the glance which that Corsican boy is now fixing on the portrait yonder on the wall—for it is the portrait of Pasquale Paoli.

CHAPTER X.

CLEMENS PAOLI.

The convent of Morosaglia is perhaps the most venerable monument of Corsican history. The hoary structure as it stands there, brown and gloomy, with the tall, frowning pile of its campanile by its side, seems itself a tradition in stone. It was formerly a Franciscan cloister. Here, frequently, the Corsican parliaments were held. Here Pasquale had his rooms, his bureaus, and often, during the summer, he was to be seen among the monks—who, when the time came, did not shrink from carrying the crucifix into the fight, at the head of their countrymen. The same convent was also a favourite residence of his brave brother Clemens, and he died here, in one of the cells, in the year 1793.

Clemens Paoli is a highly remarkable character. He resembles one of the Maccabees, or a crusader glowing with religious fervour. He was the eldest son of Hyacinth. He had served with distinction as a soldier in Naples; then he was made one of the generals of the Corsicans. But state affairs did not accord with his enthusiastic turn of mind. When his brother was placed at the head of the Government he withdrew into private life, assumed the garb of the Tertiaries, and buried himself in religious contemplation. Like Joshua, he lay entranced in prayer before the Lord, and rose from prayer to rush into battle, for the Lord had given his foes into his hand. He was the mightiest in fight, and the humblest before God. His gloomy nature has something in it prophetic, flaming, self-abasing, like that of Ali.

Wherever the danger was greatest, he appeared like an avenging angel. He rescued his brother at the convent of Bozio, when he was besieged there by Marius Matra; he expelled the Genoese from the district of Orezza, after a frightful conflict. He took San Pellegrino and San Fiorenzo; in innumerable fights he came off victorious. When the Genoese assaulted the fortified camp at Furiani with their entire force, Clemens remained for fifty-six days firm and unsubdued among the ruins, though the whole village was a heap of ashes. A thousand bombs fell around him, but he prayed to the God of hosts, and did not flinch, and victory was on his side.

Corsica owed her freedom to Pasquale, as the man who organized her resources; but to Clemens alone as the soldier who won it with his sword. He signalized himself also subsequently in the campaign of 1769, by the most splendid deeds of arms. He gained the glorious victory of Borgo; he fought desperately at Ponte Nuovo, and when all was lost, he hastened to rescue his brother. He threw himself with a handful of brave followers in the direction of Niolo, to intercept General Narbonne, and protect his brother's flight. As soon as he had succeeded in this, he hastened to Pasquale at Bastelica, and sorrowfully embarked with him for Tuscany.

He did not go to England. He remained in Tuscany; for the strange language of a foreign country would have deepened his affliction. Among the monks in the beautiful, solitary cloister of Vallombrosa, he sank again into fervent prayer and severe penance; and no one who saw this monk lying in prayer upon his knees, could have recognised in him the hero of patriot struggles, and the soldier terrible in fight.

After twenty years of cloister-life in Tuscany, Clemens returned shortly before his brother to Corsica. Once more his heart glowed with the hope of freedom for his country; but events soon taught the grayhaired hero that Corsica was lost for ever. In sorrow and penance he died in December of the same year in which his brother was summoned before the Convention, to answer the charge of high treason.

In Clemens, patriotism had become a cultus and a religion. A great and holy passion, stirred to an intense glow, is in itself religious; when it takes possession of a people, more especially when it does so in periods of calamity and severe pressure, it expresses itself as religious worship. The priests in those days preached battle from every pulpit, the monks marched with the ranks into the fight, and the crucifixes served instead of standards. The parliaments were generally held in convents, as if God himself were to preside over them, and once, as we saw in their history, the Corsicans by a decree of their Assembly placed the country under the protection of the Holy Virgin.

Pasquale, too, was religious. I saw in his house the little dark room which he had made into a chapel; it had been allowed to remain unchanged. He there prayed daily to God. But Clemens lay for six or seven hours each day in prayer. He prayed even in the thick of battle—a figure terrible to look on, with his beads in one hand and his musket in the other, clad like the meanest Corsican, and not to be recognised save by his great fiery eyes and bushy eyebrows. It is said of him that he could load his piece with furious rapidity, and that, always sure of his aim, he first prayed for mercy to the soul of the man he was about to shoot, then crying: "Poor mother!" he sacrificed his foe to the God of freedom. When the battle was over, he was gentle and mild, but always grave and profoundly melancholy. A frequent saying of his was: "My blood and my life are my country's; my soul and my thoughts are my God's."

Men of Pasquale's type are to be sought among the Greeks; but the types of Clemens among the Maccabees. He was not one of Plutarch's heroes; he was a hero of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER XI.

THE OLD HERMIT.

I had heard in Stretta that a countryman of mine was living there, a Prussian—a strange old man, lame, and obliged to use crutches. The townspeople had also informed him of my arrival. Just as I was leaving the chamber in which Clemens Paoli had died, lost in meditation on the character of this God-fearing old hero, my lame countryman came hopping up to me, and shook hands with me in the honest and hearty German style. I had breakfast set for us; we sat down, and I listened for several hours to the curious stories of old Augustine of Nordhausen.

"My father," he said, "was a Protestant clergyman, and wished to educate me in the Lutheran faith; but from my childhood I was dissatisfied with Protestantism, and saw well that the Lutheran persuasion was a vile corruption of the only true church—the church in spirit and in truth. I took it into my head to become a missionary. I went to the Latin School in Nordhausen, and remained there until I entered the classes of logic and rhetoric. And after learning rhetoric, I left my native country to go to the beautiful land of Italy, to a Trappist convent at Casamari, where I held my peace for eleven years."

"But, friend Augustine, how were you able to endure that?"

"Well, it needs a merry heart to bear it: a melancholy man becomes mad among the Trappists. I understood the carpenter-trade, and worked at it all day, beguiling my weariness by singing songs to myself in my heart."

"What had you to eat in the convent?"

"Two platefuls of broth, as much bread as we liked, and half a bottle of wine. I ate little, but I never left a drop of wine in my flask. God be praised for the excellent wine! The brother on my right was always hungry, and ate his two platefuls of broth and five rolls to the bargain."

"Have you ever seen Pope Pio Nono?"

"Yes, and spoken with him too, just like a friend. He was then bishop in Rieti; and, one Good-Friday, I went thither in my capote—I was in a different convent then—to fetch the holy oil. I was at that time very ill. The Pope kissed my capote, when I went to him in the evening to take my leave. 'Fra Agostino,' said he, 'you are sick, you must have something to eat.' 'My lord bishop,' said I, 'I never saw a brother eat on Good-Friday.' 'No matter, I give you a dispensation; I see you are sick.' And he sent to the best inn in the town, and they brought me half a fowl, some soup, wine, and confectionary; and the bishop made me sit down to table with him."

"What! did the holy Father eat on Good-Friday?"

"Only three nuts and three figs. After this I grew worse, and removed to Toscana. But one day I ceased to find pleasure in the ways of men; their deeds were hateful to me. I resolved to become a hermit. So I took my tools, purchased a few necessaries, and sailed to the little island of Monte Cristo. The island is nine miles[O] round; not a living thing dwells on it but wild goats, serpents, and rats. In ancient times the Emperor Diocletian banished Saint Mamilian there—the Archbishop of Palermo. The good saint built a church upon the island; a convent also was afterwards erected. Fifty monks once lived there—first Benedictines, then Cistercians, and afterwards Carthusians of the Order of St. Bruno. The monks of Monte Cristo built many hospitals, and did much good in Toscana; the hospital of Maria Novella in Florence, too, was founded by them. Then, you see, came the Saracens, and carried off the monks of Monte Cristo with their oxen and their servants; the goats they could not catch—they escaped to the mountains, and have ever since lived wild among rocks."

"Did you stay in the old convent?"

"No, it is in ruins. I lived in a cave, which I fitted up with the help of my tools. I built a wall, too, before the mouth of it."

"How did you spend the long days? You prayed a great deal, I suppose?"

"Ah, no! I am no Pharisee. One can't pray much. Whatever God wills must happen. I had my flute; and I amused myself with shooting the wild goats; or explored the island for stones and plants; or watched the sea as it rose and fell upon the rocks. I had books to read, too."

"Such as?"—

"The works of the Jesuit Paul Pater Segneri."

"What grows upon the island?"

"Nothing but heath and bilberries. There are one or two pretty little green valleys, and all the rest is gray rock. A Sardinian once visited the island, and gave me some seeds; so I grew a few vegetables and planted some trees."

"Are there any fine kinds of stone to be found there?"

"Well, there is beautiful granite, and black tourmaline, which is found in a white stone; and I also discovered three different kinds of garnets. At last I fell sick in Monte Cristo—sick to death, when there happily arrived a number of Tuscans, who carried me to the mainland. I have now been eleven years in this cursed island, living among scoundrels—thorough scoundrels. The doctors sent me here; but I hope to see Italy again before a year is over. There is no country in the world like Italy to live in, and they are a fine people the Italians. I am growing old, I have to go upon crutches; and I one day said to myself, 'What am I to do? I must soon give up my joiner's work, but I cannot beg;' so I went and roamed about the mountains, and by good fortune discovered Negroponte."

"Negroponte? what is that?"

"The clay with which they make pipes in the island of Negroponte; we call it meerschaum at home, you know. Ah, it is a beautiful earth—the very flower of minerals. The Negroponte here is as good as that in Turkey, and when I have my pipes finished, I shall be able to say that I am the first Christian that has ever worked in it."

Old Augustine would not let me off till I had paid a visit to his laboratory. He had established himself in one of the rooms formerly occupied by poor Clemens Paoli, and pointed out to me with pride his Negroponte and the pipes he had been engaged in making, and which he had laid in the sun to dry.

I believe that, once in his life, there comes to every man a time when he would fain leave the society of men, and go into the green woods and be a hermit, and an hour when his soul would gladly find rest even in the religious silence of the Trappist.

I have here told my reader the brief story of old Augustine's life, because it attracted me so strongly at the time, and seemed to me a true specimen of German character.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PONTE NUOVO.