The Christians take their position. Flourish of horns. The Moorish king, Nugalone, and his host issue from Mariana.

The two armies now file off—the Moorish king gives the signal for battle, and the figures of the dance begin; there are twelve of them.

—still new evolutions, till at length they dance the last figure, called the resa, and the Saracen yields.

When I saw the Moresca in Genoa, it was being performed in honour of the Sardinian constitution, on its anniversary day, May the 9th; for the beautiful dance has in Italy a revolutionary significance, and is everywhere forbidden except where the government is liberal. The people in their picturesque costumes, particularly the women in their long white veils, covering the esplanade at the quay, presented a magnificent spectacle. About thirty young men, all in a white dress fitting tightly to the body; one party with green, the other with red scarfs round the waist, danced the Moresca to an accompaniment of horns and trumpets. They all had rapiers in each hand; and as they danced the various movements, they struck the weapons against each other. This Moresca appeared to have no historical reference.

The Corsicans, like the Spaniards, have also preserved the old theatrical representations of the sufferings of our Saviour; they are now, however, seldom given. In the year 1808, a spectacle of this kind was produced in Orezza, before ten thousand people. Tents represented the houses of Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. There were angels, and there were devils who ascended through a trap-door. Pilate's wife was a young fellow of twenty-three, with a coal-black beard. The commander of the Roman soldiery wore the uniform of the French national guards, with a colonel's epaulettes of gold and silver; the officer second in command wore an infantry uniform, and both had the cross of the Legion of Honour on their breast. A priest, the curato of Carcheto, played the part of Judas. As the piece was commencing, a disturbance arose from some unknown cause among the spectators, who bombarded each other with pieces of rock, with which they supplied themselves from the natural amphitheatre.

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CHAPTER IV.

JOACHIM MURAT.

There is still a third very remarkable house in Vescovato—the house of the Ceccaldi family, from which two illustrious Corsicans have sprung; the historian already mentioned, and the brave General Andrew Colonna Ceccaldi, in his day one of the leading patriots of Corsica, and Triumvir along with Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.

But the house has other associations of still greater interest. It is the house of General Franceschetti, or rather of his wife Catharina Ceccaldi, and it was here that the unfortunate King Joachim Murat was hospitably received when he landed in Corsica on his flight from Provence; and here that he formed the plan for re-conquering his beautiful realm of Naples, by a chivalrous coup de main.

Once more, therefore, the history of a bold caballero passes in review before us on this strange enchanted island, where kings' crowns hang upon the trees, like golden apples in the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Murat's end is more touching than that of almost any other of those men who have careered for a while with meteoric splendour through the world, and then had a sudden and lamentable fall.

After his last rash and ill-conducted war in Italy, Murat had sought refuge in France. In peril of his life, wandering about in the vineyards and woods, he concealed himself for some time in the vicinity of Toulon; to an old grenadier he owed his rescue from death by hunger. The same Marquis of Rivière who had so generously protected Murat after the conspiracy of George Cadoudal and Pichegru, sent out soldiers after the fugitive, with orders to take him, alive or dead. In this frightful extremity, Joachim resolved to claim hospitality in the neighbouring island of Corsica. He hoped to find protection among a noble people, in whose eyes the person of a guest is sacred.

He accordingly left his lurking-place, reached the shore in safety, and obtained a vessel which, braving a fearful storm and imminent danger of wreck, brought him safely to Corsica. He landed at Bastia on the 25th of August 1815, and hearing that General Franceschetti, who had formerly served in his guard at Naples, was at that time in Vescovato, he immediately proceeded thither. He knocked at the door of the house of the Maire Colonna Ceccaldi, father-in-law of the general, and asked to see the latter. In the Mémoires he has written on Murat's residence in Corsica, and his attempt on Naples, Franceschetti says:—"A man presents himself to me muffled in a cloak, his head buried in a cap of black silk, with a bushy beard, in pantaloons, in the gaiters and shoes of a common soldier, haggard with privation and anxiety. What was my amazement to detect under this coarse and common disguise King Joachim—a prince but lately the centre of such a brilliant court! A cry of astonishment escapes me, and I fall at his knees."

The news that the King of Naples had landed occasioned some excitement in Bastia, and many Corsican officers hastened to Vescovato to offer him their services. The commandant of Bastia, Colonel Verrière, became alarmed. He sent an officer with a detachment of gendarmes to Vescovato, with orders to make themselves masters of Joachim's person. But the people of Vescovato instantly ran to arms, and prepared to defend the sacred laws of hospitality and their guest. The troop of gendarmes returned without accomplishing their object. When the report spread that King Murat had appealed to the hospitality of the Corsicans, and that his person was threatened, the people flocked in arms from all the villages in the neighbourhood, and formed a camp at Vescovato for the protection of their guest, so that on the following day Murat saw himself at the head of a small army. Poor Joachim was enchanted with the evvivas of the Corsicans. It rested entirely with himself whether he should assume the crown of Corsica, but he thought only of his beautiful Naples. The sight of a huzzaing crowd made him once more feel like a king. "And if these Corsicans," said he, "who owe me nothing in the world, exhibit such generous kindness, how will my Neapolitans receive me, on whom I have conferred so many benefits?"

His determination to regain Naples became immoveably firm; the fate of Napoleon, after leaving the neighbouring Elba, and landing as adventurer on the coast of France, did not deter him. The son of fortune was resolved to try his last throw, and play for a kingdom or death.

Great numbers of officers and gentlemen meanwhile visited the house of the Ceccaldi from far and near, desirous of seeing and serving Murat. He had formed his plan. He summoned from Elba the Baron Barbarà, one of his old officers of Marine, a Maltese who had fled to Porto Longone, in order to take definite measures with the advice of one who was intimately acquainted with the Calabrian coast. He secretly despatched a Corsican to Naples, to form connexions and procure money there. He purchased three sailing-vessels in Bastia, which were to take him and his followers on board at Mariana, but it came to the ears of the French, and they laid an embargo on them. In vain did men of prudence and insight warn Murat to desist from the foolhardy undertaking. He had conceived the idea—and nothing could convince him of his mistake—that the Neapolitans were warmly attached to him, that he only needed to set foot on the Calabrian coast, in order to be conducted in triumph to his castle; and he was encouraged in this belief by men who came to him from Naples, and told him that King Ferdinand was hated there, and that people longed for nothing so ardently as to have Murat again for their king.

Two English officers appeared in Bastia, from Genoa; they came to Vescovato, and made offer to King Joachim of a safe conduct to England. But Murat indignantly refused the offer, remembering how England had treated Napoleon.

Meanwhile his position in Vescovato became more and more dangerous, and his generous hosts Ceccaldi and Franceschetti were now also seriously menaced, as the Bourbonist commandant had issued a proclamation which declared all those who attached themselves to Joachim Murat, or received him into their houses, enemies and traitors to their country.

Murat, therefore, concluded to leave Vescovato as soon as possible. He still negotiated for the restoration of his sequestrated vessels; he had recourse to Antonio Galloni, commandant of Balagna, whose brother he had formerly loaded with kindnesses. Galloni sent him back the answer, that he could do nothing in the matter; that, on the contrary, he had received orders from Verrière to march on the following day with six hundred men to Vescovato, and take him prisoner; that, however, out of consideration for his misfortunes, he would wait four days, pledging himself not to molest him, provided he left Vescovato within that time.

When Captain Moretti returned to Vescovato with this reply, and unable to hold out any prospect of the recovery of the vessels, Murat shed tears. "Is it possible," he cried, "that I am so unfortunate! I purchase ships in order to leave Corsica, and the Government seizes them; I burn with impatience to quit the island, and find every path blocked up. Be it so! I will send away those brave men who so generously guard me—I will stay here alone—I will bare my breast to Galloni, or I will find means to release myself from the bitter and cruel fate that persecutes me"—and here he looked at the pistols lying on the table. Franceschetti had entered the room; with emotion he said to Murat that the Corsicans would never suffer him to be harmed. "And I," replied Joachim, "cannot suffer Corsica to be endangered or embarrassed on my account; I must be gone!"

The four days had elapsed, and Galloni showed himself with his troops before Vescovato. But the people stood ready to give him battle; they opened fire. Galloni withdrew; for Murat had just left the village.

It was on the 17th of September that he left Vescovato, accompanied by Franceschetti, and some officers and veterans, and escorted by more than five hundred armed Corsicans. He had resolved to go to Ajaccio and embark there. Wherever he showed himself—in the Casinca, in Tavagna, in Moriani, in Campoloro, and beyond the mountains, the people crowded round him and received him with evvivas. The inhabitants of each commune accompanied him to the boundaries of the next. In San Pietro di Venaco, the priest Muracciole met him with a numerous body of followers, and presented to him a beautiful Corsican horse. In a moment Murat had leapt upon its back, and was galloping along the road, proud and fiery, as when, in former days of more splendid fortune, he galloped through the streets of Milan, of Vienna, of Berlin, of Paris, of Naples, and over so many battle-fields.

In Vivario he was entertained by the old parish priest Pentalacci, who had already, during a period of forty years, extended his hospitality to so many fugitives—had received, in these eventful times, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Corsicans, and had once even sheltered the young Napoleon, when his life was threatened by the Paolists. As they sat at breakfast, Joachim asked the old man what he thought of his design on Naples. "I am a poor parish priest," said Pentalacci, "and understand neither war nor diplomacy; but I am inclined to doubt whether your Majesty is likely to win a crown now, which you could not keep formerly when you were at the head of an army." Murat replied with animation: "I am as certain of again winning my kingdom, as I am of holding this handkerchief in my hand."

Joachim sent Franceschetti on before, to ascertain how people were likely to receive him in Ajaccio,—for the relatives of Napoleon, in that town, had taken no notice of him since his arrival in the island; and he had, therefore, already made up his mind to stay in Bocognano till all was ready for the embarkation. Franceschetti, however, wrote to him, that the citizens of Ajaccio would be overjoyed to see him within their walls, and that they pressingly invited him to come.

On the 23d of September, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Murat entered Ajaccio for the second time in his life; he had entered it the first time covered with glory—an acknowledged hero in the eyes of all the world—for it was when he landed with Napoleon, as the latter returned from Egypt. At his entry now the bells were rung, the people saluted him with vivats, bonfires burned in the streets, and the houses were illuminated. But the authorities of the city instantly quitted it, and Napoleon's relations—the Ramolino family—also withdrew; the Signora Paravisini alone had courage and affection enough to remain, to embrace her relative, and to offer him hospitality in her own house. Murat thought fit to live in a public locanda.

The garrison of the citadel of Ajaccio was Corsican, and therefore friendly to Joachim. The commandant shut it up within the fortress, and declared the town in a state of siege. Murat now made the necessary preparations for his departure; previously to which he drew up a proclamation addressed to the Neapolitan people, consisting of thirty-six articles; it was printed in Ajaccio.

On the 28th of September, an English officer named Maceroni,[M] made his appearance, and requested an audience of Joachim. He had brought passes for him from Metternich, signed by the latter, by Charles Stuart, and by Schwarzenberg. They were made out in the name of Count Lipona, under which name—an anagram of Napoli—security to his person and an asylum in German Austria or Bohemia were guaranteed him. Murat entertained Maceroni at table; the conversation turned upon Napoleon's last campaign, and the battle of Waterloo, of which Maceroni gave a circumstantial account, praising the cool bravery of the English infantry, whose squares the French cavalry had been unable to break. Murat said: "Had I been there, I am certain I should have broken them;" to which Maceroni replied: "Your Majesty would have broken the squares of the Prussians and Austrians, but never those of the English." Full of fire Murat cried—"And I should have broken those of the English too: for Europe knows that I never yet found a square, of whatever description, that I did not break!"

Murat accepted Metternich's passes, and at first pretended to agree to the proposal; then he said that he must go to Naples to conquer his kingdom. Maceroni begged of him with tears to desist while it was yet time. But the king dismissed him.

On the same day, towards midnight, the unhappy Murat embarked, and, as his little squadron left the harbour of Ajaccio, several cannon-shots were fired at it from the citadel, by order of the commandant; it was said the cannons had only been loaded with powder. The expedition consisted of five small vessels besides a fast-sailing felucca called the Scorridora, under the command of Barbarà, and in these there were in all two hundred men, inclusive of subaltern officers, twenty-two officers, and a few sailors.

The voyage was full of disasters. Fortune—that once more favoured Napoleon when, seven months previously, he sailed from Elba with his six ships and eight hundred men to regain his crown—had no smiles for Murat. It is touching to see how the poor ex-king, his heart tossed with anxieties and doubts, hovers hesitatingly on the Calabrian coast; how he is forsaken by his ships, and repelled as if by the warning hand of fate from the unfriendly shore; how he is even at one time on the point of making sail for Trieste, and saving himself in Austria, and yet how at last the chivalrous dreamer, his mental vision haunted unceasingly by the deceptive semblance of a crown, adopts the fantastic and fatal resolution of landing in Pizzo.

"Murat," said the man who told me so much of Murat's days in Ajaccio, and who had been an eye-witness of what passed then, "was a brilliant cavalier with very little brains." It is true enough. He was the hero of a historical romance, and you cannot read the story of his life without being profoundly stirred. He sat his horse better than a throne. He had never learnt to govern; he had only, what born kings frequently have not, a kingly bearing, and the courage to be a king; and he was most a king when he had ceased to be acknowledged as such: this ci-devant waiter in his father's tavern, Abbé, and cashiered subaltern, fronted his executioners more regally than Louis XVI., of the house of Capet, and died not less proudly than Charles of England, of the house of Stuart.

A servant showed me the rooms in Franceschetti's in which Murat had lived. The walls were hung with pictures of the battles in which he had signalized himself, such as Marengo, Eylau, the military engagement at Aboukir, and Borodino. His portrait caught my eye instantly. The impassioned and dreamy eye, the brown curling hair falling down over the forehead, the soft romantic features, the fantastic white dress, the red scarf, were plainly Joachim's. Under the portrait I read these words—"1815. Tradito!!! abbandonato!!! li 13 Octobre assassinato!!!" (betrayed, forsaken; on the 13th of October, murdered);—groanings of Franceschetti's, who had accompanied him to Pizzo. The portrait of the General hangs beside that of Murat, a high warlike form, with a physiognomy of iron firmness, contrasting forcibly with the troubadour face of Joachim. Franceschetti sacrificed his all for Murat—he left wife and child to follow him; and although he disapproved of the undertaking of his former king, kept by his side to the last. An incident which was related to me, and which I also saw mentioned in the General's Mémoires, indicates great nobility of character, and does honour to his memory. When the rude soldiery of Pizzo were pressing in upon Murat, threatening him with the most brutal maltreatment, Franceschetti sprang forward and cried, "I—I am Murat!" The stroke of a sabre stretched him on the earth, just as Murat rushed to intercept it by declaring who he was. All the officers and soldiers who were taken prisoners with Murat at Pizzo were thrown into prison, wounded or not, as it might happen. After Joachim's execution, they and Franceschetti were taken to the citadel of Capri, where they remained for a considerable time, in constant expectation of death, till at length the king sent the unhoped-for order for their release. Franceschetti returned to Corsica; but he had scarcely landed, when he was seized by the French as guilty of high treason, and carried away to the citadel of Marseilles. The unfortunate man remained a prisoner in Provence for several years, but was at length set at liberty, and allowed to return to his family in Vescovato. His fortune had been ruined by Murat; and this general, who had risked his life for his king, saw himself compelled to send his wife to Vienna to obtain from the wife of Joachim a partial re-imbursement of his outlay, and, as the journey proved fruitless, to enter into a protracted law-process with Caroline Murat, in which he was nonsuited at every stage. Franceschetti died in 1836. His two sons, retired officers, are among the most highly respected men in Corsica, and have earned the gratitude of their countrymen by the improvements they have introduced in agriculture.

His wife, Catharina Ceccaldi, now far advanced in years, still lives in the same house in which she once entertained Murat as her guest. I found the noble old lady in one of the upper rooms, engaged in a very homely employment, and surrounded with pigeons, which fluttered out of the window as I entered; a scene which made me feel instantly that the healthy and simple nature of the Corsicans has been preserved not only in the cottages of the peasantry, but also among the upper classes. I thought of her brilliant youth, which she had spent in the beautiful Naples, and at the court of Joachim; and in the course of the conversation she herself referred to the time when General Franceschetti, and Coletta, who has also published a special memoir on the last days of Murat, were in the service of the Neapolitan soldier-king. It is pleasant to see a strong nature that has victoriously weathered the many storms of an eventful life, and has remained true to itself when fortune became false; and I contemplated this venerable matron with reverence, as, talking of the great things of the past, she carefully split the beans for the mid-day meal of her children and grandchildren. She spoke of the time, too, when Murat lived in the house. "Franceschetti," she said, "made the most forcible representations to him, and told him unreservedly that he was undertaking an impossibility. Then Murat would say sorrowfully, 'You, too, want to leave me! Ah! my Corsicans are going to leave me in the lurch!' We could not resist him."

Leaving Vescovato, and wandering farther into the Casinca, I still could not cease thinking on Murat. And I could not help connecting him with the romantic Baron Theodore von Neuhoff, who, seventy-nine years earlier, landed on this same coast, strangely and fantastically costumed, as it had also been Murat's custom to appear. Theodore von Neuhoff was the forerunner in Corsica of those men who conquered for themselves the fairest crowns in the world. Napoleon obtained the imperial crown, Joseph the crown of Spain, Louis the crown of Holland, Jerome the crown of Westphalia—the land of which Theodore King of Corsica was a native,—the adventurer Murat secured the Norman crown of the Two Sicilies, and Bernadotte the crown of the chivalrous Scandinavians, the oldest knights of Europe. A hundred years before Theodore, Cervantes had satirized, in his Sancho Panza, the romancing practice of conferring island kingdoms in reward for conquering prowess, and now, a hundred years after him, the romance of Arthur and the Round Table repeats itself here on the boundaries of Spain, in the island of Corsica, and continues to be realized in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, and our own present time.

I often thought of Don Quixote and the Spanish romances in Corsica. It seems to me as if the old knight of La Mancha were once more riding through the world's history; in fact, are not antique Spanish names again becoming historical, which were previously for the world at large involved in as much romantic obscurity as the Athenian Duke Theseus of the Midsummer Night's Dream?

CHAPTER V.

VENZOLASCA—CASABIANCA—THE OLD CLOISTER.

Near Vescovato lies the little hamlet of Venzolasca. It is a walk as if through paradise, over the hills to it through the chestnut-groves. On my way I passed the forsaken Capuchin convent of Vescovato. Lying on a beautifully-wooded height, built of brown granite, and roofed with black slate, it looked as grave and austere as Corsican history itself, and had a singularly quaint and picturesque effect amid the green of the trees.

In travelling through this little "Land of Chestnuts," one forgets all fatigues. The luxuriance of the vegetation, and the smiling hills, the view of the plain of the Golo, and the sea, make the heart glad; the vicinity of numerous villages gives variety and human interest, furnishing many a group that would delight the eye of the genre painter. I saw a great many walled fountains, at which women and girls were filling their round pitchers; some of them had their spindles with them, and reminded me of what Peter of Corsica has said.

Outside Venzolasca stands a beautifully situated tomb belonging to the Casabianca family. This is another of the noble and influential families which Vescovato can boast. The immediate ancestors of the present French senator Casabianca made their name famous by their deeds of arms. Raffaello Casabianca, commandant of Corsica in 1793, Senator, Count, and Peer of France, died in Bastia at an advanced age in 1826. Luzio Casabianca, Corsican deputy to the Convention, was captain of the admiral's ship, L'Orient, in the battle of Aboukir. After Admiral Brueys had been torn in pieces by a shot, Casabianca took the command of the vessel, which was on fire, the flames spreading rapidly. As far as was possible, he took measures for saving the crew, and refused to leave the ship. His young son Giocante, a boy of thirteen, could not be prevailed on to leave his father's side. The vessel was every moment expected to blow up. Clasped in each other's arms, father and son perished in the explosion. You can wander nowhere in Corsica without breathing an atmosphere of heroism.

Venzolasca has a handsome church, at least interiorly. I found people engaged in painting the choir, and they complained to me that the person who had been engaged to gild the wood-carving, had shamefully cheated the village, as he had been provided with ducat-gold for the purpose, and had run off with it. The only luxury the Corsicans allow themselves is in the matter of church-decoration, and there is hardly a paese in the island, however poor, which does not take a pride in decking its little church with gay colours and golden ornaments.

From the plateau on which the church of Venzolasca stands, there is a magnificent view seawards, and, in the opposite direction, you have the indescribably beautiful basin of the Castagniccia. Few regions of Corsica have given me so much pleasure as the hills which enclose this basin in their connexion with the sea. The Castagniccia is an imposing amphitheatre, mountains clothed in the richest green, and of the finest forms, composing the sides. The chestnut-woods cover them almost to their summit; at their foot olive-groves, with their silver gray, contrast picturesquely with the deep green of the chestnut foliage. Half-appearing through the trees are seen scattered hamlets, Sorbo, Penta, Castellare, and far up among the clouds Oreto, dark, with tall black church-towers.

The sun was westering as I ascended these hills, and the hours of that afternoon were memorably beautiful. Again I passed a forsaken cloister—this time, of the Franciscans. It lay quite buried among vines, and foliage of every kind, dense, yet not dense enough to conceal the abounding fruit. As I passed into the court, and was entering the church of the convent, my eye lighted on a melancholy picture of decay, which Nature, with her luxuriance of vegetation, seemed laughingly to veil. The graves were standing open, as if those once buried there had rent the overlying stones, that they might fly to heaven; skulls lay among the long green grass and trailing plants, and the cross—the symbol of all sorrow—had sunk amid a sea of flowers.

CHAPTER VI.

HOSPITALITY AND FAMILY LIFE IN ORETO—THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

An up-hill walk of two hours between fruit-gardens, the walls of which the beautiful wreaths of the clematis garlanded all the way along, and then through groves of chestnuts, brought me to Oreto.

The name is derived from the Greek oros, which means mountain; the place lies high and picturesque, on the summit of a green hill. A huge block of granite rears its gray head from the very centre of the village, a pedestal for the colossal statue of a Hercules. Before reaching the paese, I had to climb a laborious and narrow path, which at many parts formed the channel of a brook.

At length gaining the summit, I found myself in the piazza, or public square of the village, the largest I have seen in any paese. It is the plateau of the mountain, overhung by other mountains, and encircled by houses, which look like peace itself. The village priest was walking about with his beadle, and the paesani stood leaning in the Sabbath-stillness on their garden walls. I stepped up to a group and asked if there was a locanda in the place; "No," said one, "we have no locanda, but I offer you my house—you shall have what we can give." I gladly accepted the offer, and followed my host. Marcantonio, before I entered his house, wished that I should take a look of the village fountain, the pride of Oreto, and taste the water, the best in the whole land of Casinca. Despite my weariness, I followed the Corsican. The fountain was delicious, and the little structure could even make pretensions to architectural elegance. The ice-cold water streamed copiously through five pipes from a stone temple.

Arrived in Marcantonio's house, I was welcomed by his wife without ceremony. She bade me a good evening, and immediately went into the kitchen to prepare the meal. My entertainer had conducted me into his best room, and I was astonished to find there a little store of books; they were of a religious character, and the legacy of a relative. "I am unfortunate," said Marcantonio, "for I have learnt nothing, and I am very poor; hence I must stay here upon the mountain, instead of going to the Continent, and filling some post." I looked more narrowly at this man in the brown blouse and Phrygian cap. The face was reserved, furrowed with passion, and of an iron austerity, and what he said was brief, decided, and in a bitter tone. All the time I was in his company, I never once saw this man smile; and found here, among the solitary hills, an ambitious soul tormented with its thwarted aspirations. Such minds are not uncommon in Corsica; the frequent success of men who have emigrated from these poor villages is a powerful temptation to others; often in the dingiest cabin you see the family likenesses of senators, generals, and prefects. Corsica is the land of upstarts and of natural equality.

Marcantonio's daughter, a pretty young girl, blooming, tall, and well-made, entered the room. Without taking any other notice of the presence of a guest, she asked aloud, and with complete naïveté: "Father, who is the stranger, is he a Frenchman; what does he want in Oreto?" I told her I was a German, which she did not understand. Giulia went to help her mother with the meal.

This now made its appearance—the most sumptuous a poor man could give—a soup of vegetables, and in honour of the guest a piece of meat, bread, and peaches. The daughter set the viands on the table, but, according to the Corsican custom, neither she nor the mother took a share in the meal; the man alone helped me, and ate beside me.

He took me afterwards into the little church of Oreto, and to the edge of the rock, to show me the incomparably beautiful view. The young curato, and no small retinue of paesani, accompanied us. It was a sunny, golden, delightfully cool evening. I stood wonderstruck at such undreamt-of magnificence in scenery as the landscape presented—for at my feet I saw the hills, with all their burden of chestnut woods, sink towards the plain; the plain, like a boundless garden, stretch onwards to the strand; the streams of the Golo and Fiumalto wind through it to the glittering sea; and far on the horizon, the islands of Capraja, Elba, and Monte Chiato. The eye takes in the whole coast-line to Bastia, and southwards to San Nicolao; turning inland, mountain upon mountain, crowned with villages.

A little group had gathered round us as we stood here; and I now began to panegyrize the island, rendered, as I said, so remarkable by its scenery and by the history of its heroic people. The young curate spoke in the same strain with great fire, the peasants gesticulated their assent, and each had something to say in praise of his country. I observed that these people were much at home in the history of their island. The curate excited my admiration; he had intellect, and talked shrewdly. Speaking of Paoli, he said: "His time was a time of action; the men of Orezza spoke little, but they did much. Had our era produced a single individual of Paoli's large and self-sacrificing spirit, it would be otherwise in the world than it is. But ours is an age of chimeras and Icarus-wings, and yet man was not made to fly." I gladly accepted the curate's invitation to go home with him; his house was poor-looking, built of black stone. But his little study was neat and cheerful; and there might be between two and three hundred volumes on the book-shelves. I spent a pleasant hour in conversation with this cultivated, liberal, and enlightened man, over a bottle of exquisite wine, Marcantonio sitting silent and reserved. We happened to speak of Aleria, and I put a question about Roman antiquities in Corsica. Marcantonio suddenly put in his word, and said very gravely and curtly—"We have no need of the fame of Roman antiquities—that of our own forefathers is sufficient."

Returning to Marcantonio's house, I found in the room both mother and daughter, and we drew in round the table in sociable family circle. The women were mending clothes, were talkative, unconstrained, and naïve, like all Corsicans. The unresting activity of the Corsican women is well known. Subordinating themselves to the men, and uncomplainingly accepting a menial position, the whole burden of whatever work is necessary rests upon them. They share this lot with the women of all warlike nations; as, for example, of the Servians and Albanians.

I described to them the great cities of the Continent, their usages and festivals, more particularly some customs of my native country. They never expressed astonishment, although what they heard was utterly strange to them, and Giulia had never yet seen a city, not even Bastia. I asked the girl how old she was. "I am twenty years old," she said.

"That is impossible. You are scarce seventeen."

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

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

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

The Maire, therefore—happy man!—is the only person who can celebrate the birthday of the pretty Giulia—that is, if he chooses to put his great old horn-spectacles on his nose, and turn over the register for it.

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

"I have always enough to do; my brothers want something every minute; on Sunday I go to mass."

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

"I shall put on the faldetta."

She brought the faldetta from a press, and put it on; the girl looked very beautiful in it. The faldetta is a long garment, generally black, the end of which is thrown up behind over the head, so that it has some resemblance to the hooded cloak of a nun. To elderly women, the faldetta imparts dignity; when it wraps the form of a young girl, its ample folds add the charm of mystery.

The women asked me what I was. That was difficult to answer. I took out my very unartistic sketch-book; and as I turned over its leaves, I told them I was a painter.

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

I laughed loudly and heartily; the question was an apt criticism of my Corsican sketches. Marcantonio said very seriously—"Don't; she does not understand such things."

These Corsican women have as yet no notion of the arts and sciences; they read no romances, they play the cithern in the twilight, and sing a melancholy vocero—a beautiful dirge, which, perhaps, they themselves improvise. But in the little circle of their ideas and feelings, their nature remains vigorous and healthy as the nature that environs them—chaste, and pious, and self-balanced, capable of all noble sacrifice, and such heroic resolves, as the poetry of civilisation preserves to all time as the highest examples of human magnanimity.

Antigone and Iphigenia can be matched in Corsica. There is not a single high-souled act of which the record has descended to us from antiquity but this uncultured people can place a deed of equal heroism by its side.

In honour of our young Corsican Giulia, I shall relate the following story. It is historical fact, like every other Corsican tale that I shall tell.

THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

It was about the end of the year 1768. The French had occupied Oletta, a considerable village in the district of Nebbio. As from the nature of its situation it was a post of the highest importance, Paoli put himself in secret communication with the inhabitants, and formed a plan for surprising the French garrison and making them prisoners. They were fifteen hundred in number, and commanded by the Marquis of Arcambal. But the French were upon their guard; they proclaimed martial law in Oletta, and maintained a strict and watchful rule, so that the men of the village did not venture to attempt anything.

Oletta was now still as the grave.

One day a young man named Giulio Saliceti left his village to go into the Campagna, without the permission of the French guard. On his return he was seized and thrown into prison; after a short time, however, he was set at liberty.

The youth left his prison and took his way homewards, full of resentment at the insult put upon him by the enemy. He was noticed to mutter something to himself, probably curses directed against the hated French. A sergeant heard him, and gave him a blow in the face. This occurred in front of the youth's house, at a window of which one of his relatives happened to be standing—the Abbot Saliceti namely, whom the people called Peverino, or Spanish Pepper, from his hot and headlong temper. When Peverino saw the stroke fall upon his kinsman's face, his blood boiled in his veins.

Giulio rushed into the house quite out of himself with shame and anger, and was immediately taken by Peverino into his chamber. After some time the two men were seen to come out, calm, but ominously serious.

At night, other men secretly entered the house of the Saliceti, sat together and deliberated. And what they deliberated on was this: they proposed to blow up the church of Oletta, which the French had turned into their barracks. They were determined to have revenge and their liberty.

They dug a mine from Saliceti's house, terminating beneath the church, and filled it with all the powder they had.

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

Giulio had nursed his wrath till there was as little pity in his heart as in a musket-bullet. "To-morrow!" he said trembling, "to-morrow! Let me apply the match; they struck me in the face; I will give them a stroke that shall strike them as high as the clouds. I will blast them out of Oletta, as if the bolts of heaven had got among them!

"But the women and children, and those who do not know of it? The explosion will carry away every house in the neighbourhood."

"They must be warned. They must be directed under this or the other pretext to go to the other end of the village at the hour fixed, and that in all quietness."

The conspirators gave orders to this effect.

Next evening, when the dreadful hour arrived, old men and young, women, children, were seen betaking themselves in silence and undefined alarm, with secrecy and speed, to the other end of the village, and there assembling.

The suspicions of the French began to be aroused, and a messenger from General Grand-Maison came galloping in, and communicated in breathless haste the information which his commander had received. Some one had betrayed the plot. That instant the French threw themselves on Saliceti's house and the powder-mine, and crushed the hellish undertaking.

Saliceti and a few of the conspirators cut their way through the enemy with desperate courage, and escaped in safety from Oletta. Others, however, were seized and put in chains. A court-martial condemned fourteen of these to death by the wheel, and seven unfortunates were actually broken, in terms of the sentence.

Seven corpses were exposed to public view, in the square before the Convent of Oletta. No burial was to be allowed them. The French commandant had issued an order that no one should dare to remove any of the bodies from the scaffold for interment, under pain of death.

Blank dismay fell upon the village of Oletta. Every heart was chilled with horror. Not a human being stirred abroad; the fires upon the hearths were extinguished—no voice was heard but the voice of weeping. The people remained in their houses, but their thoughts turned continually to the square before the convent, where the seven corpses lay upon the scaffold.

The first night came. Maria Gentili Montalti was sitting on her bed in her chamber. She was not weeping; she sat with her head hanging on her breast, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Sometimes a profound sob shook her frame. It seemed to her as if a voice called, through the stillness of the night, O Marì!

The dead, many a time in the stillness of the night, call the name of those whom they have loved. Whoever answers, must die.

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

Bernardo lay before the convent on the scaffold; he was the seventh and youngest of the dead. He was Maria's lover, and their marriage was fixed for the following month. Now he lay dead upon the scaffold.

Maria Gentili stood silent in the dark chamber, she listened towards the side where the convent lay, and her soul held converse with a spirit. Bernardo seemed to implore of her a Christian burial.

But whoever removed a corpse from the scaffold and buried it, was to be punished by death. Maria was resolved to bury her beloved and then die.

She softly opened the door of her chamber in order to leave the house. She passed through the room in which her aged parents slept. She went to their bedside and listened to their breathing. Then her heart began to quail, for she was the only child of her parents, and their sole support, and when she thought how her death by the hand of the public executioner would bow her father and mother down into the grave, her soul shrank back in great pain, and she turned, and made a step towards her chamber.

At that moment she again heard the voice of her dead lover wail: O Marì! O Marì! I loved thee so well, and now thou forsakest me. In my mangled body lies the heart that died still loving thee—bury me in the Church of St. Francis, in the grave of my fathers, O Marì!

Maria opened the door of the house and passed out into the night. With uncertain footsteps she gained the square of the convent. The night was gloomy. Sometimes the storm came and swept the clouds away, so that the moon shone down. When its beams fell upon the convent, it was as if the light of heaven refused to look upon what it there saw, and the moon wrapped itself again in the black veil of clouds. For before the convent a row of seven corpses lay on the red scaffold, and the seventh was the corpse of a youth.

The owl and the raven screamed upon the tower; they sang the vocero—the dirge for the dead. A grenadier was walking up and down, with his musket on his shoulder, not far off. No wonder that he shuddered to his inmost marrow, and buried his face in his mantle, as he moved slowly up and down.

Maria had wrapped herself in the black faldetta, that her form might be the less distinct in the darkness of the night. She breathed a prayer to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of Sorrows, that she would help her, and then she walked swiftly to the scaffold. It was the seventh body—she loosed Bernardo; her heart, and a faint gleam from his dead face, told her that it was he, even in the dark night. Maria took the dead man in her arms, upon her shoulder. She had become strong, as if with the strength of a man. She bore the corpse into the Church of St. Francis.

There she sat down exhausted, on the steps of an altar, over which the lamp of the Mother of God was burning. The dead Bernardo lay upon her knees, as the dead Christ once lay upon the knees of Mary. In the south they call this group Pietà.

Not a sound in the church. The lamp glimmers above the altar. Outside, a gust of wind that whistles by.

Maria rose. She let the dead Bernardo gently down upon the steps of the altar. She went to the spot where the grave of Bernardo's parents lay. She opened the grave. Then she took up the dead body. She kissed him, and lowered him into the grave, and again shut it. Maria knelt long before the Mother of God, and prayed that Bernardo's soul might have peace in heaven; and then she went silently away to her house, and to her chamber.

When morning broke, Bernardo's corpse was missing from among the dead bodies before the convent. The news flew through the village, and the soldiers drummed alarm. It was not doubted that the Leccia family had removed their kinsman during the night from the scaffold; and instantly their house was forced, its inmates taken prisoners, and thrown chained into a jail. Guilty of capital crime, according to the law that had been proclaimed, they were to suffer the penalty, although they denied the deed.

Maria Gentili heard in her chamber what had happened. Without saying a word, she hastened to the house of the Count de Vaux, who had come to Oletta. She threw herself at his feet, and begged the liberation of the prisoners. She confessed that it was she who had done that of which they were supposed to be guilty. "I have buried my betrothed," said she; "death is my due, here is my head; but restore their freedom to those that suffer innocently."

The Count at first refused to believe what he heard; for he held it impossible both that a weak girl should be capable of such heroism, and that she should have sufficient strength to accomplish what Maria had accomplished. When he had convinced himself of the truth of her assertions, a thrill of astonishment passed through him, and he was moved to tears. "Go," said he, "generous-hearted girl, yourself release the relations of your lover; and may God reward your heroism!"

On the same day the other six corpses were taken from the scaffold, and received a Christian burial.

CHAPTER VII.

A RIDE THROUGH THE DISTRICT OF OREZZA TO MOROSAGLIA.

I wished to go from Oreto to Morosaglia, Paoli's native place, through Orezza. Marcantonio had promised to accompany me, and to provide good horses. He accordingly awoke me early in the morning, and made ready to go. He had put on his best clothes, wore a velvet jacket, and had shaved himself very smoothly. The women fortified us for the journey with a good breakfast, and we mounted our little Corsican horses, and rode proudly forth.

It makes my heart glad yet to think of that Sunday morning, and the ride through this romantic and beautiful land of Orezza—over the green hills, through cool dells, over gushing brooks, through the green oak-woods. Far as the eye can reach on every side, those shady, fragrant chestnut-groves; those giants of trees, in size such as I had never seen before. Nature has here done everything, man so little. His chestnuts are often a Corsican's entire estate; and in many instances he has only six goats and six chestnut-trees, which yield him his polleta. Government has already entertained the idea of cutting down the forests of chestnuts, in order to compel the Corsican to till the ground; but this would amount to starving him. Many of these trees have trunks twelve feet in thickness. With their full, fragrant foliage, long, broad, dark leaves, and fibred, light-green fruit-husks, they are a sight most grateful to the eye.

Beyond the paese of Casalta, we entered a singularly romantic dell, through which the Fiumalto rushes. You find everywhere here serpentine, and the exquisite marble called Verde Antico. The engineers called the little district of Orezza the elysium of geology; the waters of the stream roll the beautiful stones along with them. Through endless balsamic groves, up hill and down hill, we rode onwards to Piedicroce, the principal town of Orezza, celebrated for its medicinal springs; for Orezza, rich in minerals, is also rich in mineral waters.

Francesco Marmocchi says, in his geography of the island: "Mineral springs are the invariable characteristic of countries which have been upheaved by the interior forces. Corsica, which within a limited space presents the astonishing and varied spectacle of the thousandfold workings of this ancient struggle between the heated interior of the earth and its cooled crust, was not likely to form an exception to this general rule."

Corsica has, accordingly, its cold and its warm mineral springs; and although these, so far as they have been counted, are numerous, there can be no doubt that others still remain undiscovered.

The natural phenomena of this beautiful island, and particularly its mineralogy, have by no means as yet had sufficient attention directed to them.

Up to the present time, fourteen mineral springs, warm and cold, are accurately and fully known. The distribution of these salubrious waters over the surface of the island, more especially in respect to their temperature, is extremely unequal. The region of the primary granite possesses eight, all warm, and containing more or less sulphur, except one; while the primary ophiolitic and calcareous regions possess only six, one alone of which is warm.

The springs of Orezza, bursting forth at many spots, lie on the right bank of the Fiumalto. The main spring is the only one that is used; it is cold, acid, and contains iron. It gushes out of a hill below Piedicroce in great abundance, from a stone basin. No measures have been taken for the convenience of strangers visiting the wells; these walk or ride under their broad parasols down the hills into the green forest, where they have planted their tents. After a ride of several hours under the burning sun, and not under a parasol, I found this vehemently effervescing water most delicious.

Piedicroce lies high. Its slender church-tower looks airily down from the green hill. The Corsican churches among the mountains frequently occupy enchantingly beautiful and bold sites. Properly speaking, they stand already in the heavens; and when the door opens, the clouds and the angels might walk in along with the congregation.

A majestic thunderstorm was flaming round Piedicroce, and echoed powerfully from hill to hill. We rode into the paese to escape the torrents of rain. A young man, fashionably dressed, sprang out of a house, and invited us to enter his locanda. I found other two gentlemen within, with daintily-trimmed beard and moustache, and of very active but polished manners. They immediately wished to know my commands; and nimble they were in executing them—one whipped eggs, another brought wood and fire, the third minced meat. The eldest of them had a nobly chiselled but excessively pale face, with a long Slavonic moustache. So many cooks to a simple meal, and such extremely genteel ones, I was now for the first time honoured with. I was utterly amazed till they told me who they were. They were two fugitive Modenese, and a Hungarian. The Magyar told me, as he stewed the meat, that he had been seven years lieutenant-general. "Now I stand here and cook," he added; "but such is the way of the world, when one has come to be a poor devil in a foreign country, he must not stand on ceremony. We have set up a locanda here for the season at the wells, and have made very little by it."

As I looked at his pale face—he had caught fever at Aleria—I felt touched.

We sat down together, Magyar, Lombard, Corsican, and German, and talked of old times, and named many names of modern celebrity or notoriety. How silent many of these become before the one great name, Paoli! I dare not mention them beside him; the noble citizen, the man of intellect and action, will not endure their company.

The storm was nearly over, but the mountains still stood plunged in mist. We mounted our horses in order to cross the hills of San Pietro and reach Ampugnani. Thunder growled and rolled among the misty summits, and clouds hung on every side. A wild and dreary sadness lay heavily on the hills; now and then still a flash of lightning; mountains as if sunk in a sea of cloud, others stretching themselves upwards like giants; wherever the veil rends, a rich landscape, green groves, black villages—all this, as it seemed, flying past the rider; valley and summit, cloister and tower, hill after hill, like dream-pictures hanging among clouds. The wild elemental powers, that sleep fettered in the soul of man, are ready at such moments to burst their bonds, and rush madly forth. Who has not experienced this mood on a wild sea, or when wandering through the storm? and what we are then conscious of is the same elemental power of nature that men call passion, when it takes a determinate form. Forward, Antonio! Gallop the little red horses along this misty hill, fast! faster! till clouds, hills, cloisters, towers, fly with horse and rider. Hark! yonder hangs a black church-tower, high up among the mists, and the bells peal and peal Ave Maria—signal for the soul to calm itself.

The villages are here small, picturesquely scattered everywhere among the hills, lying high or in beautiful green valleys. I counted from one point so many as seventeen, with as many slender black church-towers. We passed numbers of people on the road; men of the old historic land of Orezza and Rostino, noble and powerful forms; their fathers once formed the guard of Paoli.

At Polveroso, we had a magnificent glimpse of a deep valley, in the middle of which lies Porta, the principal town of the little district of Ampugnani, embosomed in chestnuts, now dripping with the thunder-shower. Here stood formerly the ancient Accia, a bishopric, not a trace of which remains. Porta is an unusually handsome place, and many of its little houses resemble elegant villas. The small yellow church has a pretty façade, and a surprisingly graceful tower stands, in Tuscan fashion, as isolated campanile or belfry by its side. From the hill of San Pietro, you look down into the rows of houses, and the narrow streets that group themselves about the church, as into a trim little theatre. Porta is the birthplace of Sebastiani.

The mountains now become balder, and more severe in form, losing the chestnuts that previously adorned them. I found huge thistles growing by the roadside, large almost as trees, with magnificent, broad, finely-cut leaves, and hard woody stem. Marcantonio had sunk into complete silence. The Corsicans speak little, like the Spartans; my host of Oreto was dumb as Harpocrates. I had ridden with him a whole day through the mountains, and, from morning till evening had never been able to draw him into conversation. Only now and then he threw out some naïve question: "Have you cannons? Have you hells in your country? Do fruits grow with you? Are you wealthy?"

After Ave Maria, we at length reached the canton of Rostino or Morosaglia, the country of Paoli, the most illustrious of all the localities celebrated in Corsican history, and the central point of the old democratic Terra del Commune. We were still upon the Campagna, when Marcantonio took leave of me; he was going to pass the night in a house at some distance, and return home with the horses on the morrow. He gave me a brotherly kiss, and turned away grave and silent; and I, happy to find myself in this land of heroes and free men, wandered on alone towards the convent of Morosaglia. I have still an hour on the solitary plain, and, before entering Paoli's house, I shall continue the history of his people and himself at the point where I left off.

CHAPTER VIII.

PASQUALE PAOLI.