But do you see how this dry brown rock has decorated himself over and over with flowers? On his head he wears a glorious plume of myrtles, white with blossom, and his breast is wound with a threefold cord of honour; with ivy, bramble, and the white wild vine—the clematis. There are no fairer garlands than those wreaths of clematis with their clusters of white blossom, and delicate leaves; the ancients loved them well, and willingly in lyric hours wore them round their heads.

Within the compass of a few paces, what a profusion of different plants! Here are rosemary and cytisus, there wild asparagus, beside it a tall bush of lilac-blossomed erica; here again the poisonous euphorbia, which sheds a milk-white juice when you break it; and here the sympathetic helianthemum, with its beautiful golden flowers, which one by one all fall off when you have broken a single twig; yonder, outlandish and bizarre, stands the prickly cactus, like a Moorish heathen, near it the wild olive shrub, the cork-oak, the lentiscus, the wild fig, and at their roots bloom the well-known children of our northern homes—the scabiosa, the geranium, and the mallow. How exquisite, pungent, invigorating are the perfumes that all this blooming vegetation breathes forth; the rue there, the lavender, the mint, and all those labiatae. Did not Napoleon say on St. Helena, as his mournful thoughts turned again to his native island: "All was better there, to the very smell of the soil; with shut eyes I should know Corsica from its fragrance alone."

Let us hear something from Marmocchi now, on the botany of Corsica in general.

Corsica is the most central region of the great plant-system of the Mediterranean—a system characterized by a profusion of fragrant Labiatæ and graceful Caryophylleæ. These plants cover all parts of the island, and at all seasons of the year fill the air with their perfume.

On account of the central position of Corsica, its vegetation connects itself with that of all the other provinces of the immense botanic region referred to; through Cape Corso it is connected with the plants of Liguria, through the east coast with those of Tuscany and Rome, through the west and south coasts with the botany of Provence, Spain, Barbary, Sicily, and the East; and finally, through the mountainous and lofty region of the interior, with that of the Alps and Pyrenees. What a wondrous opulence, and astonishing variety, therefore, in the Corsican vegetation!—a variety and opulence that infinitely heightens the beauty of the various regions of this island, already rendered so picturesque by their geological configuration.

Some of the forests, on the slopes of the mountains, are as beautiful as the finest in Europe—particularly those of Aitone and Vizzavona; besides, many provinces of Corsica are covered with boundless groves of chestnuts, the trees in which are as large and fruitful as the finest on the Apennines or Etna. Plantations of olives, from their extent entitled to be called forests, clothe the eminences, and line the valleys that run towards the sea, or lie open to its influences. Even on the rude sides of the higher mountains, the grape-vine twines itself round the orchard-fences, and spreads to the view its green leaves and purple fruit. Fertile plains, golden with rich harvests, stretch along the coasts of the island, and wheat and rye enliven the hillsides, here and there, with their fresh green, which contrasts agreeably with the dark verdure of the copsewoods, and the cold tones of the naked rock.

The maple and walnut, like the chestnut, thrive in the valleys and on the heights of Corsica; the cypress and the sea-pine prefer the less elevated regions; the forests are full of cork oaks and evergreen oaks; the arbutus and the myrtle grow to the size of trees. Pomaceous trees, but particularly the wild olive, cover wide tracts on the heights. The evergreen thorn, and the broom of Spain and Corsica, mingle with heaths in manifold variety, and all equally beautiful; among these may be distinguished the erica arborea, which frequently reaches an uncommon height.

On the tracts which are watered by the overflowing of streams and brooks, grow the broom of Etna, with its beautiful golden-yellow blossoms, the cisti, the lentisks, the terebinths, everywhere where the hand of man has not touched the soil. Further down, towards the plains, there is no hollow or valley which is not hung with the rhododendron, whose twigs, towards the sea-coast, entwine with those of the tamarisk.

The fan-palm grows on the rocks by the shore, and the date-palm, probably introduced from Africa, on the most sheltered spots of the coast. The cactus opuntia and the American agave grow everywhere in places that are warm, rocky, and dry.

What shall I say of the magnificent cotyledons, of the beautiful papilionaceous plants, of the large verbasceæ, the glorious purple digitalis, that deck the mountains of the island? And of the mallows, the orchises, the liliaceæ, the solanaceæ, the centaurea, and the thistles—plants which so beautifully adorn the sunny and exposed, or cool and shady regions where their natural affinities allow them to grow?

The fig, the pomegranate, the vine, yield good fruit in Corsica, even where the husbandman neglects them, and the climate and soil of the coasts of this beautiful island are so favourable to the lemon and the orange, and the other trees of the same family, that they literally form forests.

The almond, the cherry, the plum, the apple-tree, the pear tree, the peach, and the apricot, and, in general, all the fruit trees of Europe, are here common. In the hottest districts of the island, the fruits of the St. John's bread-tree, the medlar of various kinds, the jujube tree, reach complete ripeness.

The hand of man, if man were willing, might introduce in the proper quarters, and without much trouble, the sugar-cane, the cotton plant, tobacco, the pine-apple, madder, and even indigo, with success. In a word, Corsica might become for France a little Indies in the Mediterranean.

This singularly magnificent vegetation of the island is favoured by the climate. The Corsican climate has three distinct zones of temperature, graduated according to the elevation of the soil. The first climatic zone rises from the level of the sea to the height of five hundred and eighty metres (1903 English feet); the second, from the line of the former, to the height of one thousand nine hundred and fifty metres (6398 feet); the third, to the summit of the mountains.

The first zone or region of the coast is warm, like the parallel tracts of Italy and Spain. Its year has properly only two seasons, spring and summer; seldom does the thermometer fall 1° or 2° below zero of Reaumur (27° or 28° Fah.); and when it does so, it is only for a few hours. All along the coast, the sun is warm even in January, the nights and the shade cool, and this at all seasons of the year. The sky is clouded only during short intervals; the heavy sirocco alone, from the south-east, brings lingering vapours, till the vehement south-west—the libeccio, again dispels them. The moderate cold of January is rapidly followed by a dog-day heat of eight months, and the temperature mounts from 8° to 18° of Reaumur (50° to 72° Fah.), and even to 26° (90° Fah.) in the shade. It is, then, a misfortune for the vegetation, if no rain falls in March or April—and this misfortune occurs often; but the Corsican trees have, in general, hard and tough leaves, which withstand the drought, as the oleander, the myrtle, the cistus, the lentiscus, the wild olive. In Corsica, as in all warm climates, the moist and shady regions are almost pestilential; you cannot walk in these in the evening without contracting long and severe fever, which, unless an entire change of air intervene, will end in dropsy and death.

The second climatic zone resembles the climate of France, more especially that of Burgundy, Morvan, and Bretagne. Here the snow, which generally appears in November, lasts sometimes twenty days; but, singularly enough, up to a height of one thousand one hundred and sixty metres (3706 feet), it does no harm to the olive; but, on the contrary, increases its fruitfulness. The chestnut seems to be the tree proper to this zone, as it ceases at the elevation of one thousand nine hundred and fifty metres (6398 feet), giving place to the evergreen oaks, firs, beeches, box-trees, and junipers. In this climate, too, live most of the Corsicans in scattered villages on mountain slopes and in valleys.

The third climate is cold and stormy, like that of Norway, during eight months of the year. The only inhabited parts are the district of Niolo, and the two forts of Vivario and Vizzavona. Above these inhabited spots no vegetation meets the eye but the firs that hang on the gray rocks. There the vulture and the wild-sheep dwell, and there are the storehouse and cradle of the many streams that pour downwards into the valleys and plains.

Corsica may therefore be considered as a pyramid with three horizontal gradations, the lowermost of which is warm and moist, the uppermost cold and dry, while the intermediate shares the qualities of both.

CHAPTER VI.

LEARNED MEN.

If we reflect on the number of great men that Corsica has produced within the space of scarcely a hundred years, we cannot but be astonished that an island so small, and so thinly populated, is yet so rich in extraordinary minds. Its statesmen and generals are of European note; and if it has not been so fruitful in scientific talent, this is a consequence of its nature as an island, and of its iron history.

But even scientific talent of no mean grade has of late years been active in Corsica, and names like Pompei, Renucci, Savelli, Rafaelli, Giubeja, Salvatore Viali, Caraffa, Gregori, are an honour to the island. The men of most powerful intellect among these belong to the legal profession. They have distinguished themselves particularly in jurisprudence, and as historians of their own country.

A man the most remarkable and meritorious of them all, and whose memory will not soon die in Corsica, was Giovanni Carlo Gregori. He was born in Bastia in 1797, and belonged to one of the best families in the island. Devoting himself to the study of law, he first became auditor in Bastia, afterwards judge in Ajaccio, councillor at the king's court in Riom, then at the appeal court in Lyons, where he was also active as president of the Academy of Sciences, and where, on the 27th of May 1852, he died. He has written important treatises on Roman jurisprudence; but he had a patriotic passion for the history of his native country, and with this he was unceasingly occupied. He had resolved to write a history of Corsica, had made detailed researches, and collected the necessary materials for it; but death overtook him, and the loss of his work to Corsica cannot be sufficiently lamented. Nevertheless, Gregori has done important service to his native country: he edited the new edition of the national historian Filippini, a continuation of whose work it had been his purpose to write; he also edited the Corsican history of Petrus Cyrnæus; and in the year 1843 he published a highly important work—the Statutes of Corsica. In his earlier years he had written a Corsican tragedy, with Sampiero for a hero, which I have not seen.

Gregori maintained a most lively literary connexion with Italy and Germany. His acquirements were unusually extended, and his activity of the genuine Corsican stubbornness. Among his posthumous manuscripts are a part of his History of Corsica, and rich materials for a history of the commerce of the naval powers. The death of Gregori filled not only Corsica, but the men of science in France and Italy, with deep sorrow.

He and Renucci also rendered good service to the public library of Bastia, which contains sixteen thousand volumes, and occupies a large building formerly belonging to the Jesuits. They may be said, in fact, to have made this library, which ranks with that of Ajaccio as second in the island. Science in Corsica is still, on the whole, in its infancy. As the historian Filippini, the contemporary of Sampiero, complains,—indolence, the mainly warlike bent given to the nature of the Corsicans by their perpetual struggles, and the consequent ignorance, entirely prevented the formation of a literature. But it is remarkable, that in the year 1650 the Corsicans founded an Academy of Sciences, the first president of which was Geronimo Biguglia, the poet, advocate, theologian, and historian. It is well known that people in those times were fond of giving such academies the most whimsical names; the Corsicans called theirs the Academy dei Vagabondi (of the Vagabonds), and a more admirable and fitting appellation they could not at that period have selected. The Marquis of Cursay, whose memory is still affectionately cherished by the Corsicans, restored this Academy; and Rousseau, himself entitled to the name of Vagabond from his wandering life, wrote a little treatise for this Corsican institution on the question: "Which is the most necessary virtue for heroes, and what heroes have been deficient in this virtue?"—a genuinely Corsican subject.

The educational establishments—the Academy just referred to has been dissolved—are, in Bastia, as in Corsica in general, extremely inadequate. Bastia has a Lyceum, and some lower schools. I was present at a distribution of prizes in the highest of the girls' schools. It took place in the court of the old college of the Jesuits, which was prettily decorated, and in the evening brilliantly illuminated. The girls, all in white, sat in rows before the principal citizens and magistrates of the town, and received bay-wreaths—those who had won them. The head mistress called the name of the happy victress, who thereupon went up to her desk and received the wreath, which she then brought to one of the leading men of the town, silently conferring on him the favour of crowning her, which ceremony was then gone through in due form. Innumerable such bay-wreaths were distributed; and many a pretty child bore away perhaps ten or twelve of them for her immortal works, receiving them all very gracefully. It seemed to me, however, that wealthy parents, or celebrated old families, were too much flattered; and they never ceased crowning Miss Colonna d'Istria, Miss Abatucci, Miss Saliceti—so that these young ladies carried more bays home with them than would serve to crown the immortal poets of a century. The graceful little festival—in which there was certainly too much French flattering of vanity—was closed by a play, very cleverly acted by the young ladies.

Bastia has a single newspaper—L'Ere Nouvelle, Journal de la Corse—which appears only on Fridays. Up till this summer, the advocate Arrighi, a man of talent, was the editor. The new Prefect of Corsica, described to me as a young official without experience, exceedingly anxious to bring himself into notice, like the Roman prefects of old in their provinces, had been constantly finding fault with the Corsican press, the most innocent in the world; and threatening, on the most trifling pretexts, to withdraw the Government permission to publish the paper in question, till at length M. Arrighi was compelled to retire. The paper, entirely Bonapartist in its politics, still exists; the only other journal in Corsica is the Government paper in Ajaccio.

There are three bookselling establishments in Bastia, among which the Libreria Fabiani would do honour even to a German city. This house has published some beautiful works.

CHAPTER VII.

CORSICAN STATISTICS—RELATION OF CORSICA TO FRANCE.

In the Bastian Journal for July 16, 1852, I found the statistics of Corsica according to calculations made in 1851, and shall here communicate them. Inhabitants

The population of the several arrondissements, five in number, was as follows:—In the arrondissement of Ajaccio, 55,008; Bastia, 20,288; Calvi, 24,390; Corte, 56,830; Sartene, 29,735.[B]

Corsica is divided into sixty-one cantons, 355 communes; contains 30,438 houses, and 50,985 households.

236,187 of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, fifty-four Reformed Christians. The French born on the island, i.e., the Corsicans included, are 231,653:—Naturalized French, 353; Germans, 41; English, 12; Dutch, 6; Spaniards, 7; Italians, 3806; Poles, 12; Swiss, 85; other foreigners, 285.

Of diseased people, there were in the year 1851, 2554; of these 435 were blind in both eyes, 568 in one eye; 344 deaf and dumb; 183 insane; 176 club-footed.

Occupation—32,364 men and women were owners of land; 34,427 were day-labourers; 6924 domestics; people in trades connected with building—masons, carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, &c., 3194; dealers in wrought goods, and tailors, 4517; victual-dealers, 2981; drivers of vehicles, 1623; dealers in articles of luxury—watchmakers, goldsmiths, engravers, &c., 55; monied people living on their incomes, 13,160; government officials, 1229; communal magistrates, 803; military and marinari, 5627; apothecaries and physicians, 311; clergy, 955; advocates, 200; teachers, 635; artists, 105; littérateurs, 51; prostitutes, 91; vagabonds and beggars, 688; sick in hospital, 85.

One class, and that the most original class in the island, has no figure assigned to it in the above list—I mean the herdsmen. The number of bandits is stated to be 200; and there may be as many Corsican bandits in Sardinia.

That the reader may be able to form a clear idea of the general administration of Corsica, I shall here furnish briefly its more important details.

Corsica has been a department since the year 1811. It is governed by a prefect, who resides in Ajaccio. He also discharges the functions of sub-prefect for the arrondissement of Ajaccio. He has four sub-prefects under him in the other four arrondissements. The prefect is assisted by the Council of the prefecture, consisting of three members, besides the prefect as president, and deciding on claims of exemption, &c., in connexion with taxes, the public works, the communal and national estates. There is an appeal to the Council of State.

The General Council, the members of which are elected by the voters of each canton, assembles yearly in Ajaccio to deliberate on the public affairs of the nation. It is competent to regulate the distribution of the direct taxes over the arrondissements. The General Council can only meet by a decree of the supreme head of the state, who determines the length of the sitting. There is a representative for each canton, in all, therefore, there are sixty-one.

In the chief town of each arrondissement meets a provincial council of as many members as there are cantons in the arrondissement. The citizens who, according to French law, are entitled to vote, are also voters for the Legislative Assembly. There are about 50,000 voters in Corsica.

Mayors, with adjuncts named by the prefect, conduct the affairs of the communes; the people have retained so much of their democratic rights, that they are allowed to elect the municipal council over which the mayor presides.

As regards the administration of justice, the high court of the department is the Appeal Court of Bastia, which consists of one chief president, two présidents de chambre, seventeen councillors, one auditor, one procurator-general, two advocates-general, one substitute, five clerks of court.

The Court of Assize holds its sittings in Bastia, and consists of three appeal-councillors, the procurator-general, and a clerk of court. It sits usually once every four months. There is a Tribunal of First Instance in the principal town of each arrondissement. There is also in each canton a justice of the peace. Each commune has a tribunal of simple municipal police, consisting of the mayor and his adjuncts.

The ecclesiastical administration is subject to the diocese of Ajaccio, the bishop of which—the only one in Corsica—is a suffragan of the Archbishop of Aix.

Corsica forms the seventeenth military division of France. Its head-quarters are in Bastia, where the general of the division resides. The gendarmerie, so important for Corsica, forms the seventeenth legion, and is also stationed in Bastia. It is composed of four companies, with four chefs, sixteen lieutenancies, and one hundred and two brigades.

I add a few particulars in regard to agriculture and industrial affairs. Agriculture, the foundation of all national wealth, is very low in Corsica. This is very evident from the single fact, that the cultivated lands of the island amount to a trifle more than three-tenths of the surface. The exact area of the island is 874,741 hectars.[C] The progress of agriculture is infinitely retarded by family feuds, bandit-life, the community of land in the parishes, the want of roads, the great distance of the tilled grounds from the dwellings, the unwholesome atmosphere of the plains, and most of all by the Corsican indolence.

Native industry is in a very languishing state. It is confined to the merest necessaries—the articles indispensable to the common handicrafts, and to sustenance; the women almost everywhere wear the coarse brown Corsican cloth (panno Corso), called also pelvue; the herdsmen prepare cheese, and a sort of cheesecake, called broccio; the only saltworks are in the Gulf of Porto Vecchio. There are anchovy, tunny, and coral fisheries on many parts of the coast, but they are not diligently pursued.

The commerce of Corsica is equally trifling. The principle export is oil, which the island yields so abundantly, that with more cultivation it might produce to the value of sixty millions of francs; it also exports pulse, chestnuts, fish, fresh and salted, wood, dyeing plants, hides, corals, marble, a considerable amount of manufactured tobacco, especially cigars, for which the leaf is imported. The main imports are—grain of various kinds, as rye, wheat, and rice; sugar, coffee, cattle, cotton, lint, leather, wrought and unwrought iron, brick, glass, stoneware.

The export and import are grievously disproportionate. The Customs impose ruinous restrictions on all manufacture and all commerce; they hinder foreigners from exchanging their produce for the produce of the country; hence the Corsicans must pay tenfold for their commodities in France, while even wine is imported from Provence free of duty, and thus checks the native cultivation of the vine. For Corsica is, in point of fact, precluded from exporting wine to France; France herself being a productive wine country. Even meal and vegetables are sent to the troops from Provence. The export of tobacco to the Continent is forbidden.[D] The tyrannical customs-regulations press with uncommon severity on the poor island; and though she is compelled to purchase articles from France to the value of three millions yearly, she sends into France herself only a million and a half. And Corsica yields the exchequer yearly 1,150,000 francs.

Bastia, Ajaccio, Isola Rossa, and Bonifazio are the principal trading towns.

But however melancholy the condition of Corsica may be in an industrial and a commercial point of view, its limited population protects it at least from the scourge of pauperism, which, in the opulent and cultivated countries of the Continent, can show mysteries of a much more frightful character than those of bandit-life and the Vendetta.

For five-and-twenty years now, with unimportant interruptions, have the French been in possession of the island of Corsica; and they have neither succeeded in healing the ever open wound of the Corsican people, nor have they, with all the means that advanced culture places at their disposal, done anything for the country, beyond introducing a few very trifling improvements. The island that has twice given France her Emperor, and twice dictated her laws, has gained nothing by it but the satisfaction of her revenge. The Corsican will never forget the disgraceful way in which France appropriated his country; and a high-spirited people never learns to love its conquerors. When I heard the Corsicans, even of the present day, bitterly inveighing against Genoa, I said to them—"Leave the old Republic of Genoa alone; you have had your full Vendetta on her—Napoleon, a Corsican, annihilated her; France betrayed you, and bereft you of your nationality; you have had your full Vendetta on France, for you sent her your Corsican Napoleon, who enslaved her; and even now this great France is a Corsican conquest, and your own province."

Two emperors, two Corsicans, on the throne of France, bowing her down with despotic violence;—well, if an ideal conception can have the worth of reality, then we are compelled to say, never was a brave subjugated people more splendidly avenged on its subduers. The name of Napoleon, it may be confidently affirmed, is the only tie that binds the Corsican nation to France; without this its relation to France would be in no respect different from that of other conquered countries to their foreign masters. I have read, in many authors, the assertion that the Corsican nation is at the core of its heart French. I hold this assertion to be a mistake, or an intentional falsehood. I have never seen the least ground for it. The difference between Corsican and Frenchman in nationality, in the most fundamental elements of character and feeling, puts a deep gulf between the two. The Corsican is decidedly an Italian; his language is acknowledged to be one of the purest dialects of Italian, his nature, his soil, his history, still link the lost son to his old mother-country. The French feel themselves strange in the island, and both soldiers and officials consider their period of service there as a "dreary exile in the isle of goats." The Corsican does not even understand such a temperament as the French—for he is grave, taciturn, chaste, consistent, thoroughly a man, and steadfast as the granite of his country.

Corsican patriotism is not extinct. I saw it now and then burst out. The old grudge still stirs the bosom of the Corsican, when he remembers the battle of Ponte Nuovo. Travelling one day, in a public conveyance, over the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo, a Corsican sitting beside me, a man from the interior, pulled me vehemently by the arm, as we came in sight of the famous bridge, and cried, with a passionate gesture—"This is the spot where the Genoese murdered our freedom—I mean the French." The reader will understand this, when he remembers that the name of Genoese means the same as deadly foe; for hatred of Genoa, the Corsicans themselves say, is with them undying. Another time I asked a Corsican, a man of education, if he was an Italian. "Yes," said he, "for I am a Corsican." I understood him well, and reached him my hand. These are isolated occurrences—accidents, but frequently a living word, caught from the mouth of the people, throws a vivid light on its state of feeling, and suddenly reveals the truth that does not stand in books compiled by officials.

I have heard it said again and again, and in all parts of the country—"We Corsicans would gladly be Italian—for we are in reality Italians, if Italy were only united and strong; as she is at present, we must be French, for we need the support of a great power; by ourselves we are too poor."

The Government does all it can to dislodge the Italian language, and replace it with the French. All educated Corsicans speak French, and, it is said, well; fashion, necessity, the prospect of office, force it upon many. Sorry I was to meet Corsicans (they were always young men) who spoke French with each other evidently out of mere vanity. I could not refrain on such occasions from expressing my astonishment that they so thoughtlessly relinquished their beautiful native tongue for that of the French. In the cities French is much spoken, but the common people speak nothing but Italian, even when they have learned French at school, or by intercourse with Frenchmen. French has not at all penetrated into the mountainous districts of the interior, where the ancient, venerated customs of the elder Corsicans—their primitive innocence, single-heartedness, justice, generosity, and love of liberty—remain unimpaired. Sad were it for the noble Corsican people if they should one day exchange the virtues of their rude but great forefathers for the refined corruption of enervated Parisian society. The moral rottenness of society in France has robbed the French nation of its strength. It has stolen like an infection into society in other countries, deepened their demoralization, and made incapacity for action general. It has disturbed the hallowed foundation of all human society—the family relation. But a people is ripe for despotism that has lost the spirit of family. The whole heroic history of the Corsicans has its source in the natural law of the inviolability and sacredness of the family relation, and in that alone; even their free constitution which they gave themselves in the course of years, and completed under Paoli, is but a development of the family. All the virtues of the Corsicans spring from this spirit; even the frightful night-sides of their present condition, such as the Vendetta, belong to the same root.

We look with shuddering on the avenger of blood, who descends from his mountain haunts, to stab his foe's kindred, man by man; yet this bloody vampire may, in manly vigour, in generosity, and in patriotism, be a very hero compared with such bloodless, sneaking villains, as are to be found contaminating with their insidious presence the great society of our civilisation, and secretly sucking out the souls of their fellow-men.

CHAPTER VIII.

BRACCIAMOZZO, THE BANDIT.

The second day after my arrival in Bastia, I was awakened during the night by an appalling noise in my locanda, in the street of the Jesuits. It was as if the Lapithæ and Centaurs had got together by the ears. I spring to the door, and witness, in the salle-à-manger, the following scene:—Mine host infuriated and vociferating at the pitch of his voice—his firelock levelled at a man who lies before him on his knees, other people vociferating, interfering, and trying to calm him down; the man on his knees implores mercy: they put him out of the house. It was a young man who had given himself out in the locanda for a Marseillese, had played the fine gentleman, and, in the end, could not pay his bill.

The second day after this, I happened to cross early in the morning the Place San Nicolao, the public promenade of the Bastinese, on my way to bathe. The executioners were just erecting a guillotine beside the town-house, though not in the centre of the Place, still on the promenade itself. Carabineers and a crowd of people surrounded the shocking scene, to which the laughing sea and the peaceful olive-groves formed a contrast painfully impressive. The atmosphere was close and heavy with the sirocco. Sailors and workmen stood in groups on the quay, silently smoking their little chalk-pipes, and gazing at the red scaffold, and not a few of them, in the pointed barretto, brown jacket, hanging half off, half on; their broad breasts bare, red handkerchiefs carelessly knotted about their necks, looked as if they had more to do with the guillotine than merely to stare at it. And, in fact, there probably was not one among the crowd who was not likely to meet with the same fate, if accident but willed it, that the hallowed custom of the Vendetta should stain his band with murder, and murder should force him to the life of the bandit.

"Who is it they are going to execute?"

"Bracciamozzo (Stump-arm). He is only three-and-twenty. The sbirri caught him in the mountains; but he defended himself like a devil—they shot him in the arm—the arm was taken off, and it healed."

"What has he done?"

"Dio mio!—he has killed ten men!"

"Ten men! and for what?"

"Out of capriccio."

I hastened into the sea to refresh myself with a bath, and then back into my locanda, in order to see no more of what passed. I was horror-struck at what I had heard and seen, and a shuddering came over me in this wild solitude. I took out my Dante; I felt as if I must read some of his wild phantasies in the Inferno, where the pitch-devils thrust the doomed souls down with harpoons as often as they rise for a mouthful of air. My locanda lay in the narrow and gloomy street of the Jesuits. An hour had elapsed, when a confused hum, and the trample of horses' feet brought me to the window—they were leading Bracciamozzo past, accompanied by the monks called the Brothers of Death, in their hooded capotes, that leave nothing of the face free but the eyes, which gleam spectrally out through the openings left for them—veritable demon-shapes, muttering in low hollow tones to themselves, horrible, as if they had sprung from Dante's Hell into reality. The bandit walked with a firm step between two priests, one of whom held a crucifix before him. He was a young man of middle size, with beautiful bronze features and raven-black curly hair, his face pale, and the pallor heightened by a fine moustache. His left arm was bound behind his back, the other was broken off near the shoulder. His eye, fiery no doubt as a tiger's, when the murderous lust for blood tingled through his veins, was still and calm. He seemed to be murmuring prayers. His pace was steady, and his bearing upright. Gendarmes rode at the head of the procession with drawn swords; behind the bandit, the Brothers of Death walked in pairs; the black coffin came last of all—a cross and a death's-head rudely painted on it in white. It was borne by four Brothers of Mercy. Slowly the procession moved along the street of the Jesuits, followed by the murmuring crowd; and thus they led the vampire with the broken wing to the scaffold. My eyes have never lighted on a scene more horrible, seldom on one whose slightest details have so daguerreotyped themselves in my memory.

I was told afterwards that the bandit died without flinching, and that his last words were: "I pray God and the world for forgiveness, for I acknowledge that I have done much evil."

This young man, people said to me, had not become a murderer from personal reasons of revenge, that is, in order to fulfil a Vendetta; he had become a bandit from ambition. His story throws a great deal of light on the frightful state of matters in the island. When Massoni was at the height of his fame [this man had avenged the blood of a relation, and then become bandit], Bracciamozzo, as the people began to call the young Giacomino, after his arm had been mutilated, carried him the means of sustenance: for these bandits have always an understanding with friends and with goat-herds, who bring them food in their lurking-places, and receive payment when the outlaws have money. Giacomino, intoxicated with the renown of the bold bandit Massoni, took it into his head to follow his example, and become the admiration of all Corsica. So he killed a man, took to the bush, and was a bandit. By and bye he had killed ten men, and the people called him Vecchio—the old one, probably because, though still quite young, he had already shed as much blood as an old bandit. One day Vecchio shot the universally esteemed physician Malaspina, uncle of a hospitable entertainer of my own, a gentleman of Balagna; he concealed himself in some brushwood, and fired right into the diligenza as it passed along the road from Bastia. The mad devil then sprang back into the mountains, where at length justice overtook him.

A career of this frightful description, then, is possible for a man in Corsica. Nobody there despises the bandit; he is neither thief nor robber, but only fighter, avenger, and free as the eagle on the hills. Hot-headed youths are fired with the thought of winning fame by daring deeds of arms, and of living in the ballads of the people. The inflammable temperament of these men—who have been tamed by no culture, who shun labour as a disgrace, and, thirsting for action, know nothing of the world but the wild mountains among which Nature has cooped them up within their sea-girt island—seems, like a volcano, to insist on vent. On another, wider field, and under other conditions, the same men who house for years in caverns, and fight with sbirri in the bush, would become great soldiers like Sampiero and Gaffori. The nature of the Corsicans is the combative nature; and I can find no more fitting epithet for them than that which Plato applies to the race of men who are born for war, namely, "impassioned."[E] The Corsicans are impassioned natures; passionate in their jealousy and in their pursuit of fame; passionately quick in honour, passionately prone to revenge. Glowing with all this fiery impetuosity, they are the born soldiers that Plato requires.

After Bracciamozzo's execution, I was curious to see whether the beau monde of Bastia would promenade as usual on the Place San Nicolao in the evening, and I did not omit walking in that direction. And lo! there they were, moving up and down on the Place Nicolao, where in the morning bandit blood had flowed—the fair dames of Bastia. Nothing now betrayed the scene of the morning; it was as if nothing had happened. I also wandered there; the colouring of the sea was magically beautiful. The fishing-skiffs floated on it with their twinkling lights, and the fishermen sang their beautiful song, O pescator dell' onda.

In Corsica they have nerves of granite, and no smelling-bottles.

CHAPTER IX.

THE VENDETTA, OR REVENGE TO THE DEATH.

The origin of the bandit life is to be sought almost exclusively in the ancient custom of the Vendetta, that is, of exacting blood for blood. Almost all writers on this subject, whom I have read, state that the Vendetta began to be practised in the times when Genoese justice was venal, or favoured murder. Without doubt, the constant wars, and defective administration of justice greatly contributed to the evil, and allowed the barbarous custom to become inveterate, but its root lies elsewhere. For the law of blood for blood does not prevail in Corsica only, it exists also in other countries—in Sardinia, in Calabria, in Sicily, among the Albanians and Montenegrins, among the Circassians, Druses, Bedouins, &c.

Like phenomena must arise under like conditions; and these are not far to seek, for the social condition of all these peoples is similar. They all lead a warlike and primitive life; nature around them is wild and impressive; they are all, with the exception of the Bedouins, poor mountaineers inhabiting regions not easily accessible to culture, and clinging, with the utmost obstinacy, to their primitive condition and ancient barbarous customs; further, they are all equally penetrated with the same intense family sympathies, and these form the sacred basis of such social life as they possess. In a state of nature, and in a society rent asunder by prevailing war and insecurity, the family becomes a state in itself; its members cleave fast to each other; if one is injured, the entire little state is wronged. The family exercises justice only through itself, and the form this exercise of justice takes, is revenge. And thus it appears that the law of blood for blood, though barbarous, still springs from the injured sense of justice, and the natural affection of blood-relations, and that its source is a noble one—the human heart. The Vendetta is barbarian justice. Now the high sense of justice characterizing the Corsicans is acknowledged and eulogized even by the authors of antiquity.

Two noble and great passions have, all along, swayed the the Corsican mind—the love of family and the love of country. In the case of a quite poor people, living in a sequestered island—an island, moreover, mountainous, rugged, and stern—these passions could not but be intense, for to that nation they were all the world. Love of country produced that heroic history of Corsica which we know, and which is in reality nothing but an inveterate Vendetta against Genoa, handed down for ages from father to son; and love of family has produced the no less bloody, and no less heroic history of the Vendetta, the tragedy of which is not yet played to an end. The exhaustless native energy of this little people is really something inconceivable, since, while rending itself to pieces in a manner the most sanguinary, it, at the same time, possessed the strength to maintain so interminable and so glorious a struggle with its external foes.

The love of his friends is still to the Corsican what it was in the old heroic times—a religion; only the love of his country is with him a higher duty. Many examples from Corsican history show this. As among the ancient Hellenes, fraternal love ranked as love's highest and purest form, so it is ranked among the Corsicans. In Corsica, the fraternal relation is viewed as the holiest of all relations, and the names of brother and sister indicate the purest happiness the heart can have—its noblest treasure, or its saddest loss. The eldest brother, as the stay of the family, is revered simply in his character as such. I believe nothing expresses so fully the range of feeling, and the moral nature of a people, as its songs. Now the Corsican song is strictly a dirge, which is at the same time a song of revenge; and most of these songs of revenge are dirges of the sister for her brother who has fallen. I have always found in this poetry that where-ever all love and all laudation are heaped upon the dead, it is said of him, He was my brother. Even the wife, when giving the highest expression to her love, calls her husband, brother. I was astonished to find precisely the same modes of expression and feeling in the Servian popular poetry; with the Servian woman, too, the most endearing name for her husband is brother, and the most sacred oath among the Servians is when a man swears by his brother. Among unsophisticated nations, the natural religion of the heart is preserved in their most ordinary sentiments and relations—for these have their ground in that which alone is lasting in the circumstances of human life; the feeling of a people cleaves to what is simple and enduring. Fraternal love and filial love express the simplest and most enduring relations on earth, for they are relations without passion. And the history of human wo begins with Cain the fratricide.

Wo, therefore, to him who has slain the Corsican's brother or blood-relation! The deed is done; the murderer flees from a double dread—of justice, which punishes murder; and of the kindred of the slain, who avenge murder. For as soon as the deed has become known, the relations of the fallen man take their weapons, and hasten to find the murderer. The murderer has escaped to the woods; he climbs perhaps to the perpetual snow, and lives there with the wild sheep: all trace of him is lost. But the murderer has relatives—brothers, cousins, a father; these relatives know that they must answer for the deed with their lives. They arm themselves, therefore, and are upon their guard. The life of those who are thus involved in a Vendetta is most wretched. He who has to fear the Vendetta instantly shuts himself up in his house, and barricades door and window, in which he leaves only loop-holes. The windows are lined with straw and with mattresses; and this is called inceppar le fenestre. The Corsican house among the mountains, in itself high, almost like a tower, narrow, with a high stone stair, is easily turned into a fortress. Intrenched within it, the Corsican keeps close, always on his guard lest a ball reach him through the window. His relatives go armed to their labour in the field, and station sentinels; their lives are in danger at every step. I have been told of instances in which Corsicans did not leave their intrenched dwellings for ten, and even for fifteen years, spending all this period of their lives besieged, and in deadly fear; for Corsican revenge never sleeps, and the Corsican never forgets. Not long ago, in Ajaccio, a man who had lived for ten years in his room, and at last ventured upon the street, fell dead upon the threshold of his house as he re-entered: the ball of him who had watched him for ten years had pierced his heart.

I see, walking about here in the streets of Bastia, a man whom the people call Nasone, from his large nose. He is of gigantic size, and his repulsive features are additionally disfigured by the scar of a frightful wound in his eye. Some years ago he lived in the neighbouring village of Pietra Nera. He insulted another inhabitant of the place; this man swore revenge. Nasone intrenched himself in his house, and closed up the windows, to protect himself from balls. A considerable time passed, and one day he ventured abroad; in a moment his foe sprang upon him, a pruning-knife in his hand. They wrestled fearfully; Nasone was overpowered; and his adversary, who had already given him a blow in the neck, was on the point of hewing off his head on the stump of a tree, when some people came up. Nasone recovered; the other escaped to the macchia. Again a considerable time passed. Once more Nasone ventured into the street: a ball struck him in the eye. They raised the wounded man; and again his giant nature conquered, and healed him. The furious bandit now ravaged his enemy's vineyard during the night, and attempted to fire his house. Nasone removed to the city, and goes about there as a living example of Corsican revenge—an object of horror to the peaceable stranger who inquires his history. I saw the hideous man one day on the shore, but not without his double-barrel. His looks made my flesh creep; he was like the demon of revenge himself.

Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading. Thirst for vengeance is with them an entirely natural sentiment—a passion that has become hallowed. In their songs, revenge has a cultus, and is celebrated as a religion of filial piety. Now, a sentiment which the poetry of a people has adopted as an essential characteristic of the nationality is ineradicable; and this in the highest degree, if woman has ennobled it as her feeling. Girls and women have composed most of the Corsican songs of revenge, and they are sung from mountain-top to shore. This creates a very atmosphere of revenge, in which the people live and the children grow up, sucking in the wild meaning of the Vendetta with their mother's milk. In one of these songs, it is said that twelve lives are insufficient to avenge the fallen man's—boots! That is Corsican. A man like Hamlet, who struggles to fill himself with the spirit of the Vendetta, and cannot do it, would be pronounced by the Corsicans the most despicable of all poltroons. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, does human blood and human life count for so little as in Corsica. The Corsican is ready to take life, but he is also ready to die.

Any one who shrinks from avenging himself—a milder disposition, perhaps, or a tincture of philosophy, giving him something of Hamlet's hesitancy—is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity. To reproach a man for suffering an injury to remain unavenged is called rimbeccare. The old Genoese statute punished the rimbecco as incitation to murder. The law runs thus, in the nineteenth chapter of these statutes:—

"Of those who upbraid, or say rimbecco.—If any one upbraids or says rimbecco to another, because that other has not avenged the death of his father, or of his brother, or of any other blood-relation, or because he has not taken vengeance on account of other injuries and insults done upon himself, the person so upbraiding shall be fined in from twenty-five to fifty lire for each time, according to the judgment of the magistrate, and regard being had to the quality of the person, and to other circumstances; and if he does not pay forthwith, or cannot pay within eight days, then shall he be banished from the island for one year, or the corda shall be put upon him once, according to the judgment of the magistrate."

In the year 1581, the severity of the law was so far increased, that the tongue of any one saying rimbecco was publicly pierced. Now, it is especially the women who incite the men to revenge, in their dirges over the corpse of the person who has been slain, and by exhibiting the bloody shirt. The mother fastens a bloody rag of the father's shirt to the dress of her son, as a perpetual admonition to him that he has to effect vengeance. The passions of these people have a frightful, a demoniac glow.

In former times the Corsicans practised the chivalrous custom of previously proclaiming the war of the Vendetta, and also to what degree of consanguinity the vengeance was to extend. The custom has fallen into disuse. Owing to the close relationship between various families, the Vendetta, of course, crosses and recrosses from one to another, and the Vendetta that thus arises is called in Corsica, Vendetta transversale.

In intimate and perfectly natural connexion with this custom, stand the Corsican family feuds, still at the present day the scourge of the unhappy island. The families in a state of Vendetta, immediately draw into it all their relatives, and even friends; and in Corsica, as in other countries where the social condition of the population is similar, the tie of clan is very strong. Thus wars between families arise within one and the same village, or between village and village, glen and glen; and the war continues, and blood is shed for years. Vendetta, or lesser injuries—frequently the merest accidents—afford occasion, and with temperaments so passionate as those of the Corsicans, the slightest dispute may easily terminate in blood, as they all go armed. The feud extends even to the children; instances have been known in which children belonging to families at feud have stabbed and shot each other. There are in Corsica certain relations of clientship—remains of the ancient feudal system of the time of the seigniors, and this clientship prevails more especially in the country beyond the mountains, where the descendants of the old seigniors live on their estates. They have no vassals now, but dependants, friends, people in various ways bound to them. These readily band together as the adherents of the house, and are then, according to the Corsican expression, the geniali, their protectors being the patrocinatori. Thus, as in the cities of mediæval Italy, we have still in Corsica wars of families, as a last remnant of the feuds of the seigniors. The granite island has maintained an obstinate grasp on her antiquity; her warlike history and constant internal dissensions, caused by the ambition and overbearing arrogance of the seigniors, have stamped the spirit of party on the country, and till the present day it remains rampant.

In Corsica, the frightful word "enemy" has still its full old meaning. The enemy is there the deadly enemy; he who is at enmity with another, goes out to take his enemy's life, and in so doing risks his own. We, too, have brought the old expression "deadly enemy" with us from a more primitive state, but the meaning we attach to it is more abstract. Our deadly enemies have no wish to murder us—they do us harm behind our backs, they calumniate us, they injure us secretly in all possible ways, and often we do not so much as know who they are. The hatreds of civilisation have usually something mean in them; and hence, in our modern society, a man of noble feeling can no longer be an enemy—he can only despise. But deadly foes in Corsica attack the life; they have loudly and publicly sworn revenge to the death, and wherever they find each other, they stab and shoot. There is a frightful manliness in this; it shows an imposing, though savage and primitive force of character. Barbarous as such a state of society is, it nevertheless compels us to admire the natural force which it develops, especially as the Corsican avenger is frequently a really tragic individual, urged by fate, because by venerated custom, to murder. For even a noble nature can here become a Cain, and they who wander as bandits on the hills of this island, are often bearers of the curse of barbarous custom, and not of their own vileness, and may be men of virtues that would honour and signalize them in the peaceable life of a civil community.

A single passion, sprung from noble source—revenge, and nothing but revenge! it is wonderful with what irresistible might it seizes on a man. Revenge is, for the poor Corsicans, the dread goddess of Fate, who makes their history. And thus through a single passion man becomes the most frightful demon, and more merciless than the Avenging Angel himself, for he does not content himself with the first-born. Yet dark and sinister as the human form here appears, the dreadful passion, nevertheless, produces its bright contrast. Where foes are foes for life and death, friends are friends for life and death; where revenge lacerates the heart with tiger blood-thirstiness, there love is capable of resolutions the most sublime; there we find heroic forgetfulness of self, and the Divine clemency of forgiveness; and nowhere else is it possible to see the Christian precept, Love thine enemy, realized in a more Christian way than in the land of the Vendetta.

Often, too, mediators, called parolanti, interfere between the parties at feud, who swear before them an oath of reconciliation. This oath is religiously sacred; he who breaks it is an outlaw, and dishonoured before God and man. It is seldom broken, but it is broken, for the demon has made his lair in human hearts.

CHAPTER X.

BANDIT LIFE.