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CHAPTER II.

THE CITY OF CORTE.

The arrondissement of Corte, the central district of the island, embraces fifteen cantons and 113 communes, and contains a population of 55,000. The town itself has about 5000 inhabitants.

Corte is an inland city with a situation not less imposing than those of the Corsican seaports. The panorama of brown hills in the midst of which it lies, the citadel on an inaccessible and rugged crag, give the town an air of iron defiance. Mountains rise on every side in the most varied forms. To the north the heights are low, and mostly dome-shaped, covered with copsewood, or fields of grain. The summer has clad these hills in a dark brown, and the region thus wears an aspect of the utmost sternness. They are the last spurs of the ranges that form the watershed between the Golo and Tavignano, and separate two valleys, the pastoral dale of Niolo, and the valley of the Tavignano. At the opening of the latter, where the Tavignano is joined by the Restonica, lies Corte. Three high and craggy hills command the entrance to this valley. Both rivers have forced a channel for themselves through deep ravines, and rush into one another over fragments of shattered cliffs. There is a stone bridge over each.

The little city has only one main street, which is newly built, and is called the Corso; an alley of elms gives it a singularly rural appearance. And here too I was astonished at the lonely seclusion, the idyllic stillness, that so peculiarly characterize the Corsican towns. You really believe yourself in the farthest nook of the world, and cut off from all connection with its ongoings.

The city is venerable from its associations with events in Corsican history. In the time of Paoli it was the centre of his democratic government, and in ancient times the residence of Moorish kings; it was important in every period as the central point of the island, and as possessing a fortress which frequently decided the course and issue of a campaign.

The citadel has a singular appearance. It is the Acropolis of Corsica. It stands on a black, steep, and rugged crag, which rises over the river Tavignano. Walls, towers, the old town—which the citadel encloses—all look black, ruinous, and desolate. They have been battered in a thousand sieges. This castle of Corte has been assaulted and defended oftener than Belgrade. The brave Vincentello d'Istria laid the foundations of the present structure, in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The loop-hole is still shown from which the Genoese suspended Gaffori's son, to deter his father from continuing his cannonade of the fortress. Enacting itself on and around this grim, giddy height, how wild must have been that heroic scene! The action of Gaffori is one of the noblest traits to be found in the range of Corsican history, which, as I have already said, for every instance of magnanimity in Greeks and Romans, can produce another no way inferior. The spirit that has animated this Corsican people, has proved itself no less heroic than that which we admire in Brutus and Timoleon; but the acts of national and individual heroism which this spirit produced, have lain buried in the obscurity of the period and the locality.

The name of Gaffori is Corte's fairest ornament, and his little house, still standing pierced with balls, the most splendid monument the city can show. This house preserves another heroic association, connected with Gaffori's brave and high-souled wife. The Genoese, whose constant policy it was to use the families of dreaded Corsicans as hostages, and to oppose natural affection to love of country, on one occasion took advantage of Gaffori's absence from home to attack his house, in order to secure the person of his wife. But she instantly barricaded the door and window, and, with a few friends who had hurried to her assistance, defended herself, musket in hand, for days against the Genoese, who showered a storm of bullets upon the house. The little garrison was reduced to the utmost extremity, and her friends counselled her to capitulate; Gaffori's wife, however, conveyed a cask of powder into a cellar, and seizing a match, swore that she would blow up the house the moment they ceased to fire upon the besiegers. Her friends, who knew her desperate courage, continued their resistance, and at length Gaffori himself appeared with a band of Corsicans, and rescued his wife. After the murder of Gaffori, this woman took his son, the boy who had once been bound to the walls of the castle, and made him swear to hate the Genoese and avenge his father. Hamilcar did the same with his son Hannibal in ancient times.

In this house of Gaffori's, Carlo Bonaparte lived with his wife Letitia in 1778; it was a house worthy to give origin to a Napoleon.

Many memories of Paoli are connected with a house which bears the name of the Palazzo de Corte, and was the seat of Paoli's government, and his residence. Here is the room in which he worked, a mean-looking little place enough, as beseemed the legislator of the Corsicans. They tell that the great man, who was not safe from the balls of the assassin, kept the windows of this room always barricaded; and in fact, the window-shutters are still to be seen lined with cork, as they were in his time. The National Assembly had decreed him a guard of twenty-four men, acting in this like the ancient democracies of Greece; he had another body-guard always in the room beside him, consisting of six Corsican dogs. I cannot help being reminded here of his contemporary and admirer Frederick the Great, and how he too, in his cabinet, was always surrounded by dogs; but these were kept for amusement or ornament merely—the pretty Biche, and the graceful Alcmene, and other greyhounds. The scene is characteristically different. If Paoli were painted in the company of his dogs, as Frederick the Great has so often been represented surrounded by his, it would make rather a wild picture: the Corsican hero in his mean-looking cabinet, writing by the fireplace, wrapped in a coarse woollen gown, behind a barricaded window, grim, shaggy wolf-hounds crouched upon the floor—there we have a Corsican historical genre painting.

In another room, formerly the hall where the Council of Nine sat, are preserved some very interesting relics; the rods, to wit, which were to have supported the canopy of Paoli's throne. Paoli and a throne? Impossible! Had the great democrat a hankering after kingly emblems? So it is affirmed; the story is as follows:—One day workmen were seen erecting a throne in the National Palace. It was of crimson damask, hung with gold fringes, and supported, above the Corsican arms, a golden crown, so placed that when Paoli seated himself, it stood over his head. To suit the throne, there were nine smaller crimson chairs, for the members of the Council of Nine. When the councillors had assembled in the hall, the door of Paoli's room opened, and Paoli, as it is said, in a magnificent robe of state, his head covered, and his sword by his side, entered, and moved towards the throne. A murmur of astonishment and displeasure instantly arose among the councillors, followed by a deep silence. Paoli stopped, was disconcerted, and he never took his seat upon the throne.

I have found so many confirmations of this story, that it seems to me almost presumption to doubt it. If it is true, it is a remarkable trait in the character of the great man, and at least a proof that human weakness everywhere asserts its sway, and that no mortal is safe from the moment when he may be overcome by vanity and outside show. Paoli and a throne—there can hardly be a greater contradiction. Liberty and the Corsican people were the noble man's loftiest throne, and no potentate ever occupied one more glorious than that plain arm-chair on which Paoli sat, the legislator and deliverer of a people.

His enemies have accused him of aiming at regal authority, but they wrong him in this, and Paoli's history gives the lie to the charge. Did he wish, perhaps, by means of regal emblems, to secure from foreign countries and from his own people a greater degree of respect for the state over which he presided, and which still bore the time-honoured appellation of the Kingdom of Corsica? We have no other instances of his indulging in kingly pomp. He, and all the other members of the government, went about in the common dress of the country; their clothes were of the Corsican wool, they lived like the simplest commoners. The heads of the state were distinguishable from the people only by their superior intelligence, and it was merely to give the French, in matters of exterior as well as in those of more importance, the impression of a regular and formal government, that he ordered the members of the Supreme Council to wear a distinct dress, a green coat, gold-laced—green and gold being the Corsican colours. He and they put on this official dress for the first time, when French officers came first to Corte. The country's rulers were to appear in a manner becoming their dignity. This was, however, a concession to French etiquette which we cannot but lament, because in making it Paoli ceased to maintain himself superior to appearances, and abolished the beautiful democratic equality which had previously expressed itself even in dress, by some pieces of gold lace. The Corsicans were entitled to wear their woollen blouse with greater pride than the French their glittering uniforms. Trifling and subordinate as these matters may in themselves appear, they nevertheless furnish material for thought. For time makes unessential differences essential, and of extrinsic makes intrinsic. There is in time an invisible influence for evil, which gradually stains all that is pure, dwarfs all that is great, debases all that is noble. In this world of ours, it is so and not otherwise; exalted virtue is a phenomenon confined to the period of struggle towards a great aim. In Corsica it has often made me sad to think, that all those heroic exertions of its people, all those battles for freedom, have proved fruitless; and that now, in the land of Sampiero, of Gaffori, and of Paoli, "the vain nation" bears rule. Yet it would have been an experience still more sad, had the state of Paoli sickened of itself, and yielded to human selfishness. For my part, I do not believe that it would have escaped this universal fate. For true freedom exists only in Utopia. Mankind appears to be capable of it only in the highest, most sacred moments.

On one occasion Paoli received in this Palazzo Nazionale a very splendid embassy. A ship of Tunis had stranded on the coast of Balagna, and Paoli had not only restored to the shipwrecked strangers all the property of which the peasantry of the region had deprived them, but hospitably entertained them, and sent them home to the Bey of Tunis under the conduct of two officers, and well supplied with every necessary for their journey. The Bey thereupon sent an embassy to Paoli to thank him, and convey to him the assurance that he would remain eternally his and his country's friend, and that no Corsican would ever sustain injury within the bounds of his territories. The ambassador from Tunis kneeled down before Paoli, and, putting his hand to his forehead, said in Italian, Il Bey ti saluta, e ti vuol bene—the Bey greets thee, and wishes thee well. He brought him as presents, a beautiful, splendidly caparisoned horse, two ostriches, a tiger, a sabre set with diamonds; and after residing some days in Corte, returned again to Africa.

Close to Corte lies the old convent of the Franciscans—a ruin of considerable size. In Paoli's time, the Corsican parliament assembled in the church of this convent; and from its pulpit not a few noble patriots have lifted their earnest voices. Many and not vain sacrifices were made to liberty in this church, and her name was not heard as an empty phrase. Those who called upon it, also died for it. In the year 1793, a general assembly of the Corsicans had met on the open ground before the convent; the time was stormy, for the grayhaired Paoli stood impeached of high treason by the National Convention of France. Pozzo di Borgo, that unrelenting enemy of Napoleon—like him, a citizen of Ajaccio—climbed upon a tree, and delivered a powerful and fiery speech in defence of Paoli, whose accusers, the furious clubbists, Arena and the Bonapartes, were here declared infamous.

At the present day, wandering about in the streets of the little city, which are silent as the grave, and beneath whose shady elms here and there, poor-looking Corsicans idle in dreamy listlessness, one can hardly believe that scarcely a hundred years ago such an obscure, secluded nook was the seat of the most enlightened political wisdom of the age.

Paoli founded a university in Corte; and he here called the first Corsican printing-press and the first Corsican newspaper into existence. From this university knowledge and enlightenment were to spread like a flood of light over the mountains, and into all the valleys of Corsica, dispelling the mediæval barbarism of her inhabitants. I have already, in the History of the Corsicans, mentioned this university, and spoken of its high merits as a patriotic institution. Many of Corsica's ablest men have been its pupils—talented advocates, who form in this island the majority of the literary class. Carlo Bonaparte, Napoleon's father, studied at this university. The young institution fell, however, when the country lost its freedom. Paoli on his deathbed set apart a legacy for its restoration, and with the help of this capital a sort of college was re-established in the year 1836. There are at present a director and seven professors for the sciences connected with it, but its condition is not very flourishing. An institution of this academic kind is also perhaps less suited to the wants of Corsica than good commercial schools.

I found among the Corsicans many learned and highly cultivated men, and here in Corte I became acquainted with a gentleman, the extent of whose reading in the literature of the Romanic languages astounded me. He is the son of one of the brave captains who, after the battle of Ponte Nuovo, remained in arms till the last moment, and whom I have mentioned by name. His memory is so retentive, that he knows by heart the best passages of all the great Italian, French, and Latin authors, and that it is a slight matter for him to repeat whole pages of Tasso or Ariosto, and long extracts from Voltaire or Macchiavelli, or from Livy, Horace, Boileau, or Rousseau. Talking with him of literature on one occasion, I asked him if he had ever read any works of Goethe. "No," said our well-read friend, "Pope is the only English author with whom I am acquainted."

Some gentlemen, whose agreeable acquaintance I made at the table d'hôte of my inn, among them an artist, the only Corsican painter with whom I became acquainted on the island, took me to the marble quarries in the vicinity of Corte. A quarry of this kind was discovered not long ago in the rocks above the Restonica. The stone is of a bluish colour, with reddish-white veins, and is available for architecture and ornaments. We found the workmen occupied in getting a large block, of which a pillar was to be made, down the hill. It was laid on rollers, and shoved by means of the Archimedean screw to the edge of the incline, at the foot of which the blocks are dressed. The large and beautiful stone slid rapidly down, enveloping itself in a cloud of dust, and as it forced its way onwards, rung clear as a bell. At the foot of the hill on which this rich quarry lies, the Restonica turns a mill that cuts the marble into plates. Seven days are required to cut a block into thirty of these. In Corte, therefore, Seneca's assertion is now disproved—non pretiosus lapis hic cæditur—here no costly stone is hewn. Speaking generally, however, the philosopher's words are still applicable, for Corsica's treasures of beautiful stone have remained dead capital.

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CHAPTER III.

AMONG THE GOAT-HERDS OF MONTE ROTONDO.

————"tomo un puño de bellotas en la mano, y mirandolas atentamente sotto la voz a semejantes razones: Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados."—Don Quixote.

I had formed the resolution of ascending the highest mountain in Corsica, Monte Rotondo, which lies about half a day's journey to the south-west of Corte, and may almost be considered as the middle point of the island. Although the excursion was described to me as most fatiguing, still I hoped to find a clear day and sufficient remuneration for my trouble. But what I most of all wished was, some insight into the still entirely primitive life of the herdsmen.

I hired a guide and a mule, and, provided with a little bread and some calabashes of wine, early on the morning of the 28th of July I rode into the hills. The road, a shepherd's track, never leaves the valley of the wild Restonica, from its confluence with the Tavignano, close by the town, up to the very summit of Monte Rotondo, where it has its source. The bed of this beautiful mountain-stream, is, during most of its course, a ravine of gloomy and impressive character. In the vicinity of Corte, it expands into a valley of considerable breadth, in which chestnut and walnut trees thrive. As you ascend, it grows narrower and narrower; the walls of rock on each side rise in black, gigantic masses, shadowed with dark-green, natural wood, of old pines and larches.

My sure-footed mule clambered safely up the narrowest paths along the very edge of abysses; and a glance downwards into these, where the Restonica foamed milk-white far below, had something in it both of terror and of beauty. A magnificent forest of pines and larches received me as the sun got higher. Very picturesque are these giant trees—the pine with its broad, green roof, and the larch, like the cedar of Lebanon, gnarled, soaring, and rich in branches. Tall erica, box, and wild myrtles, covered with a snow of blossoms, clustered in profusion round their mighty stems. And the fragrance of all those medicinal herbs, in which the mountains of Corsica are so rich, made the air of the woods balsamic and refreshing.

My guide kept on before me at a rapid pace. I sometimes almost shuddered, when I saw myself alone with him in this wilderness of woods and rocks, and he threw a backward glance on me. He was an ill-favoured fellow, and had a villanous eye. I learned afterwards that there was blood on his hands—that he was a murderer. A year previously he had stabbed a Lucchese dead, with a single thrust, on the market-place of Corte.

Riding for hours through these romantic mountain-solitudes you hear nothing but the rushing of the streams, the screaming of falcons, and now and then the clear whistle of a goat-herd calling to his goats.

The herdsmen live in caverns or in huts, on the declivities of Monte Rotondo, to the topmost ridge of which their flocks clamber. The highest community of shepherds is to be found at an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea.

After three hours' ride I reached the first of these singular stations—the Rota del Dragone. Descending from the edge of the ravine towards the water, I saw a black, sooty cave before me, running, like a vault, into the cliff, below enormous blocks of granite—a few paces from its entrance the furious Restonica, chafing itself to madness among huge fragments of rock; all around, crag above crag, and dense forest. A wall of uncemented stones formed an enclosure round the entrance of the grotto. A fire was burning in the cave, round which cowered the shepherd family. A miserable-looking woman seemed to be engaged in mending some article of dress; beside her a fever-sick boy lay wrapped in a brown blanket of goat's wool, from which his pale face and glittering eyes looked out inquiringly.

The herdsman had come out of his cave, and hospitably invited me to alight, and refresh myself with new milk and cheese. I willingly accepted his invitation, and proceeded to inspect the interior of this singular cavernous abode. The grotto, I found, ran a considerable way into the mountain, affording room for a flock of two hundred goats and sheep, which the herdsman every evening brings in to milk. It was so exactly the cave of Polyphemus, that it almost seemed Homer must have taken his description from it. Every item of the description was here, even the rows of dishes full of milk, and more than a hundred flat round cheeses arranged on fresh leaves. Only Polyphemus himself was wanting; for mine host, however robber-like and wild he might look in his shaggy habiliments, was hospitality itself.

"Do the bandits ever pay you a visit?" I asked the Troglodyte. "Sometimes they do," said the man; "when they're hungry. You see the stone here on which I sit?—two years ago a couple of bandit-hunters concealed themselves in my cave; they were after Serafin. But Serafin stole in upon them through the night, and with two stabs he made them both cold upon this stone; then he went his way again into the hills."

My guide hinted that it was time to go. I thanked the herdsman for his refreshment, and rode off, not without a shudder.

The path, which now took us through the Restonica to the other bank, became constantly steeper and more difficult. At last, after a ride of two hours, I reached, thoroughly damp with mist, and during a magnificent thunderstorm, the last of the pasturing-stations on the lower heights of Rotondo. Its name is Co di Mozzo.

I had heard a great deal about the shielings of Monte Rotondo; and the pictures of them my imagination drew were original enough, slightly idyllic perhaps—little huts in the green pine-forest, or on flowery Alpine slopes, with all proper pastoral adjuncts. But now, as I rode up in the midst of thunder and lightning, and through a drizzling rain, I saw nothing but a wild waste of titanic fragments of stone—a confusion of vast granite blocks clothing the sides of a huge, gray, desolate cone. A light smoke was rising from among the stones. The gray of the watery clouds, the pale lightnings, the roll of the thunder, the rushing of the Restonica, and the deep melancholy of the gray hills, were irresistibly saddening.

Some storm-battered larches stood on the steepest edge of a naked ravine, through which the Restonica foamed and tumbled from block to block. All around, nothing but the dreariest cliffs; and one grand glimpse into the mist-filled valley out of which I had ascended. My eye sought long for the huts towards which the guide was pointing. At length I detected them among the rocks, and advancing, I soon had before me this most singular of pastoral communities. It consisted of four dwellings, erected in the most primitive manner conceivable, probably with less architectural skill than the termites or the beavers expend on their houses.

Each of these huts consists of four stone walls, built without mortar. They are about three feet in height, and support a sloping roof of sooty stems of trees and boards, on which heavy stones are laid to keep them in their places. An aperture in the front wall serves as door and principal chimney; but the smoke issues through the roof and the walls wherever it finds a chink. An enclosure of stones surrounds a narrow space before the hut, and within this space, dishes of various kinds stand; also, in one corner of it rises the palo—a rude stake with projecting pegs, on which hang pots and kettles, clothes, and strips of goat's flesh.

Some shaggy dogs sprang out as I rode up, and forthwith the men, women, and children crept from their huts, and curiously eyed the stranger. They looked picturesque enough in the midst of the stony waste; the pelone, their shaggy, brown mantle flung about them, the red baretto on their heads, and their bronzed features looking out from their dark bushy beards.

I called to them: "Friends, bestow your hospitality on a stranger who has come over the sea to visit the herdsmen of Co di Mozzo!"

In friendly tones they returned: "Evviva!" and "Benvenuto!"

"Come into my hut," said one, "and dry yourself at the fire; it is warm in there." I immediately twisted myself through the door, curious to see the interior of such a habitation. I found myself in a dark chamber, about fourteen feet in length and ten in breadth—wholly without furniture, not a stool, not a table, nothing but the black naked ground, the black, naked stone walls, and such a smoke of pine-wood as, I thought, it must be impossible to live in. Close by the wall a huge log was burning, and a kettle hung above it.

Angelo, my host, spread a blanket which I had brought with me on the floor, and gave me the place of honour, as near the fire as possible. Soon the whole family had cowered about it—Angelo's wife, three little girls, my host, myself, and my guide. The hut was full. Meanwhile, Angelo threw some pieces of goat's flesh into the kettle, and Santa his wife brought cheese and milk. Our table equipage was as original and pastoral as you choose; it consisted simply of a board laid upon the ground, on which Santa placed a wooden bowl of milk, a cheese, and some bread. "Eat," said she, "and think that you are with poor herd-people; you shall have trouts for supper, for my son has gone a-fishing."

"Fetch the broccio," said the shepherd; "it is the best we have, and you will like it." I was curious to see what the broccio was; I had heard it praised in Corte as the greatest dainty of the island, and the flower of all the hill-products. Santa brought a sort of round covered basket, set it before me, and opened it. Within lay the broccio, white as snow. It is a kind of sweet, curdled, goats' milk; and eaten with rum and sugar, it certainly is a dainty. The poor herdsmen sell a broccio-cake in the city for one or two francs.

With our wooden spoons we wrought away valiantly at the broccio—only the wife and children did not share. Crouching thus on the ground at the fire, in the narrow, smoke-filled hut, wild and curious faces all about me, the wooden spoon in my hand, I began humorously to celebrate the life of the shepherds among the hills, who are contented with what their flocks yield them, and know not the wretchedness of mine and thine, nor the golden cares of palaces.

But the honest pastore shook his head, and said: "Vita povera, vita miserabile!"—a poor life, a miserable life!

And so it really is: these men lead a wretched life. For four months of the year—May, June, July, and August—they burrow in these cabins, destitute of everything that makes life human. In their world occur no changes but those of the elements—the storm, the clouds, the thunder-shower, the hail, the heat; in the evening, a robber-story by the fire, a melancholy song, a lamento to the pipe, a hunting-adventure with the muffro or the fox; high above them and around them the giant pyramids of the hoary Rotondo, and the starry magnificence of the sky; in their breast, perhaps, despite the vita povera, an uncomplaining, serene, pious, honest human heart.

With the dawn of day these poor people rise from the hard ground—on which they have been sleeping in their clothes, and without other covering—and drive their herds to the pastures; there they consume their scanty meal, of cheese, bread, and milk. The old people, who remain at home, lie in the hut by the fire, occupied with some simple household work. In the evening, the flocks return and are milked; light falls, and it is time to go to sleep again.

The snow and rains of September drive the herdsmen from their mountain cabins. They descend with their flocks to the coast and the paese, where they have usually more habitable dwellings, in which frequently the wives and children stay all summer. My hostess Santa was the only female in the pastoral community of Co di Mozzo, which consists of six families. "Why," I asked her, "did you come up from the paese to this gloomy hut?" "Look you," put in Angelo, "she came up to refresh herself." I was on the point of laughing outright, for the smoke in the hovel was bringing tears to my eyes, and the atmosphere was infernal. So, after all, I was to view the wretched heap of stones as a summer villa, to which the family had retired to refresh itself! "Yes," said Angelo, as he caught my sceptical look; "below, it is warm; and up here, we have the mountain wind, and the clear stream, fresh and cold as ice. We live as the merciful God grants." I began to have respect for Angelo and his philosophy. His speech was serious and laconic; and he was taciturn, as it becomes a philosopher to be.

Angelo was owner of sixty head of goats, and fifty sheep. The quantity of milk drawn from these is inconsiderable. In summer it is barely sufficient to support the family. The broccio and the cheese, sold below, furnish bread, and the coarsest clothing. Winter is a hard time, for the milk goes to feed the kids and lambs. Many a shepherd, however, has a flock of some hundreds. When the sons and daughters have to be portioned, it is a fortunate thing if the luck of the patriarchs can be had, so that the flocks multiply. The dowry of a shepherd's girl consists in twelve goats if she is poor; if she is wealthy it ranges higher, according to her parents' means.

The weather had cleared up. I stepped out of the cabin, and drew long breaths of the fresh air. The shepherds sat here and there on the stones, smoking their little wooden pipes. They are in the habit of choosing the oldest, or the most respected of their number, to preside in the community, and arbitrate in all disputes. This circumstance, which I discovered accidentally, surprised me; for it allowed me, in this little democracy of shepherds, a glance into the primitive condition of human society, and the beginnings of political life. It seems six men cannot live together without regulating their society, and developing laws. I greeted the little stumpy podestà most reverently; and as I contemplated him in silence, I thought him more venerable than Dejoces, the first and wisest of all the kings of the Medes.

Near the cabins I remarked smaller covered huts of stone, of a round or of an oblong form. These were the storehouses. Angelo opened a little door in his, and creeping in, beckoned me to follow; I contented myself with peeping in. I saw the flat cheeses lying on green twigs, and white balls of goats'-milk butter in little baskets.

I sat down on a stone, and commenced sketching the cabins. The whole community came round me, and looked on with expressions of the liveliest delight. Every one now wanted to have his portrait taken, in order that it might afterwards be "printed" in Paris, as they said. They would have it that I was from Paris; and I could not make it intelligible to them, that besides Paris, there was another country called Germania. "Germania, then," said my host, "is your paese; and this paese has kings, and it belongs to Paris." There the matter had to rest.

The afternoon sun shone warmly, and tempted me into the hills. I took the children with me—Antonio, a boy of thirteen, shaggy as a bear; Paola Maria, and Fiordalisa. Fiordalisa means Lily-flower. Let the reader picture to himself this Lily-flower of Monte Rotondo: she has seen twelve summers; her dress is considerably tattered, her dark hair hangs wild about her brown face, her eyes are clear and keen as a falcon's, her teeth are white as ivory, and she climbs the rocks barefoot with the agility of a chamois. We botanized along the Restonica. I espied some beautiful red pinks on a ledge that I could hardly have reached, and I pointed to them. "Aspettate! wait!" cried the Lily-flower; and she was off like lightning up the cliff, and presently she was down again with a handful of the pinks. The children now emulated each other in climbing and dancing on the perilous crags like so many elves; fear seemed a thing quite unknown to these little mountain-sprites. As we were crossing the Restonica on our return home, Lily-flower sprang into the stream, and took the wild fancy of splashing me with water, which she did most unsparingly. I found the red foxglove growing in great abundance in these hills—my little elves brought it me in armfuls; and when we got home, we encircled the smoking hut with a garland of the poisonous beauties—a decoration that it had probably never before met with. This was to be a holiday token on the cabin that a guest was there, since with good men it is always festival when their house shelters a guest.

Lily-flower's delight in the garland was unbounded. "To-morrow," she said, "when you are up on the hill, you will find a blue flower—the most beautiful flower in all Corsica."

"If you say it, Fiordalisa, then it must be true, and to-morrow I shall find the blue wonder-flower."[L]

Evening came on in the great, silent wilderness. Weary with my day's fatigues, I sat down before the cabins, and contemplated the changeful play of the clouds. Mists ascended from the ravines, and, attracted or repelled by the mountains, rolled themselves together in the valleys, or dispersed, and were lost among the clouds trailing slowly from above along the hill-tops. The flocks and herds were coming in. I saw with pleasure the long lines of the graceful black goats, and the black sheep, to which the poor shepherds owe their subsistence. Each herdsman drove, or drew them by a peculiar clear call, into an enclosure beside his cabin, and there milked them. This operation is managed with astonishing rapidity: the herdsman sits in the centre of the herd, and catches one goat after another by the hind legs. He calls every animal by its name; he knows each exactly. The mark of ownership is generally on the ear. Forty head of goats, belonging to my host, yielded only a single moderate pailful of milk.

The herds remain within the enclosure during the night. The shaggy dogs protect them, not from the wolf, which is not found in Corsica, but from the fox, which is remarkably bold and powerful among the hills, and attacks the lambs. My host's Rosso and Mustaccio were two magnificent dogs.

Meantime the eldest son had returned with a number of beautiful trouts, and Angelo busied himself with supper. I noticed that it was always the man who cooked, and not his wife. Was this in honour of his guest? For the position of woman in general in Corsica is low and menial. As I was thinking of this, it occurred to me that in Homer the men perform all similar operations—put the meat on the spit, roast it, and bring it to the table; so that I had living and acting before me, the man of the epic and primitive epoch of culture. In Corsica are to be found the men of Homer and the men of Plutarch.

We had a bread-soup, cheese and milk, and, in honour of the guest, roasted goat's flesh. For this classic goat-herd took the flesh from the palo, and, after the fashion of ancient times, stuck it on a spit, and, kneeling, held it over the glowing fire. Carefully, from time to time, a piece of bread was pressed upon the dripping fat, that the precious juice of the sweet loin-pieces might not be lost. He cooked the trouts in a broth of goat's flesh; and when they were ready, he set them before me, and ladled me forth from the mighty ladle as much as heart could desire. I saw it in the children's eyes, that this was no ordinary meal; and it would have refreshed me still more admirably, had they been allowed to share it.

It was night in the cabin. I was puzzled to imagine how our sleeping was to be arranged within the narrow limits. But that was soon managed. My blanket was spread for me on the ground, and I stretched myself on it, beside the innermost wall; I was at a loss, however, for something on which to rest my head. I looked at Angelo. "Divine and wise Angelo," I said, "give ear. I have never, I swear to you, been a Sybarite, yet am I accustomed to pillows. Could not your hospitality provide me with some such convenience?" Angelo pondered; then he handed me his zaïno or shepherd's bag of goatskin, and spoke the winged words—"Now sleep, and felicissima notte!"

Gradually the others laid themselves down, wife and children, on the naked earth, leaning their heads on the wall. Angelo lay nearest the threshold; beside him the youngest child Maria; then Santa his wife, Lily-flower, Paola Maria, and myself. So we all lay peaceably together, our feet turned towards the fire. It was not long till they were all asleep, and I lay contemplating with satisfaction this happily slumbering family of Gymnosophists, and mused on the words of the wise Sancho, when he praised the inventor of sleep, "the mantle that covers all human care, the food that appeases hunger, the water that extinguishes thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that alleviates the heat—in short, the universal money for which all things may be bought, the beam and scale that equalizes king and shepherd." The fire shed a red glow over the singular group. I lamented that I was not a painter. But the intolerable heat and smoke of the pitch-pine would not let me sleep. I rose from time to time and stepped over the sleepers into the free air. I may say this was stepping from hell into heaven—for I walked straight into a cloud that had descended on the hill, and enveloped the cabins.

The night was chill and moist; but the clouds passed off, and the infinite sky threw its myriad lights on the mists, on the craggy heights, and the dark larches. I sat long beside the rushing Restonica, whose tumultuous din broke the impressive silence of the still, pure night. The spirit of solitude had never come so near me as it did that night among the black crags, at the brink of a headlong brook, far up among the clouds and mists, face to face with primitive nature, lost in a foreign island girt with many a mile of sea. In such moments, the feeling of loneliness becomes oppressive, and the sudden thought alarms the soul, that the human being is but an insignificant atom; and that perhaps this spiritual atom may in an instant lose and forget its connexion with all related to it, and remain lonely in void space. But the soul is not thus to be overcome; it spreads its wings for the distant home, there regains its serenity, and loneliness has fled. I listen to sounds that seem to be borne to me from the hills; they sound sometimes like wild laughter—it is the mad Restonica that is so unquiet. These stones are the dumb witnesses to ancient, dreadful birth-pangs, offspring of the fieriest embraces of Uranus and Gaea.

The cold air drove me again to the fire. Overcome with fatigue, I at last fell asleep, when I was suddenly awakened by the clear voice of Santa, who cried several times, Spettacoli divini! spettacoli divini! She was putting the children to rights; they had flung themselves about into all sorts of comic positions. Divine spectacles they were certainly. Lily-flower lay rolled up like a snake half over her mother; Paola had thrown her arm about my neck. The child had perhaps heard an owl in her sleep, or seen the vampire in a dream, that comes to suck the heart's-blood.

I spent the rest of the night sitting looking into the fire, and amused myself with imaginary representations of the heretics whom the Holy Catholic Church has burned to the honour of God. Now this is quite an endless amusement.