The day was dawning. I went out and refreshed myself in the waves of the sleepless Restonica, which sprang young and fresh from rock to rock, and hastened down into the valley. The young stream has a beautiful life. After a merry career of twelve hours through ever-green woods, it dies in the waters of the Tavignano. The Restonica gained my affections. I know the whole story of its life; for I have accompanied it in a single day, from its first leap to the end of its course; and many a glorious draught did it afford me. Its water is as clear, as fresh, and as light as ether; and is renowned far and wide throughout the land of Corsica. I never drank better water; it was more grateful than the noblest wine. There is such a keen quality in this incomparable stream, that it cleans iron to the purity of a mirror in the shortest time, and preserves it from rust; Boswell mentions that the Corsicans of Paoli's time laid their rusty gun-barrels in the Restonica to clean them. It makes all the stones and gravel that it washes milk-white; and its channel and banks glitter with such stones down to its confluence with the Tavignano.
On asking my guide to ascend with me now to the summit of Rotondo, he confessed that he did not know the road. Angelo, therefore, became my guide. We began the ascent between three and four o'clock in the morning. It was less dangerous but infinitely more fatiguing than I had supposed.
A number of ridges that rise one above the other, have to be surmounted before we reach Trigione, from which the ascent of the highest peak commences. These successive heights form a mighty scala—a stair piled by the hand of Nature—of colossal steps of primeval reddish granite; huge Titans, storming heaven with rocks in their giant hands, might be fit to stride them. Block lies here over block, vast and formless as chaos, and towering upwards and upwards in such endless masses of monotonous gray, that the heart almost quails, and the foot refuses to go farther. The rains of autumn have, in many places, given the granite such a remarkable smoothness, that it presents large surfaces with all the polish of a mirror. The water was running in a thousand little channels, in exhaustless abundance. Tree vegetation, however, here ceases, and only alder-bushes mark where the young Restonica is collecting its waters.
In two hours we had climbed Trigione, and the white snow-covered summit lay before us. Its steep and jagged cliffs form an incomplete circle (hence the name Rotondo—round), partly hollowed out, like a crater; and where this huge wild amphitheatre of rocks opens, lies a little dark lake, the Lago di Monte Rotondo, encircled by gentle green slopes; an ice-cold draught in a giant beaker of granite. Snow-fields rise from the lake to the summit—a strange sight, and producing a peculiar impression, in the hottest dog-days, under a southern sky and the 42d degree of latitude. They were covered with a crust of ice, and perceptibly cooled the air near them. But though I was in the region of eternal snow, I found the temperature pleasantly cool and bracing, and by no means uncomfortably low.
The summit appeared to the eye near enough, yet it took us two full hours' climbing, often on our hands and feet, over the shattered fragments of rock, before we reached it. The most difficult part of it was the ascent over a strip of snow, on which we could not keep our footing. We succeeded, however, by dint of hammering steps in the icy crust with sharp stones, in making cautious progress. At length, much exhausted, we reached the extreme peak, a torn and rugged obelisk of gray rock ending in a slender pinnacle, clinging to which one manages to support himself on the giddy and somewhat perilous height.
From this highest point of Corsica, then, 9000 feet (exactly 2764 metres) above the sea level, I saw the greater part of the island, and the sea far below washing its coast on both sides—a sight of inexpressible grandeur, once to have enjoyed which may justly be to any man a life-long source of pleasant thought. The horizon which the eye can take in from Rotondo is much grander and more beautiful than that afforded by Mont Blanc. The view ranges far over the island itself into the glittering distances of the sea, over the Tuscan islands to the mainland of Italy, which in clear weather shows the white Alps of the northern lakes, and the entire bend of the coast from Nice to Rome. On the other side rise the mountains of Toulon, and the wondrous panorama thus includes within its magic circle, mountains, seas, islands, the Alps, the Apennines, and Sardinia. I was not so fortunate as to have the prospect presented to me in its entire magnificence, for the clouds that rolled themselves unceasingly up from the ravines, and the exhalations, deprived me of part of the distance. To the north I saw the peninsula of Cape Corso stretching itself into the sea like a dagger; to the east the level coast country descending in easy lines, the islands of the Tuscan sea, and Tuscany itself; to the west the Gulfs of Prato, Sagone, Ajaccio, and Valinco. Ajaccio showed itself very distinctly on its tongue of land in the beautiful bay—a row of little white houses, that looked like swans swimming in the sea. The sea itself seemed an ocean of light.
Southwards the broad-breasted Monte d'Oro shuts out the view of the island. A great many peaks, little lower than Rotondo, and, like it, crowned with glittering snow, were visible on every hand, as the finely-formed Cinto, and Cape Bianco towards the north—the highest summits of the district of Niolo.
From such a comprehensive point of view the island itself shows like an enormous skeleton of rocks. Monte Rotondo does not lie within the main mountain-chain which traverses the island from north to south—it belongs to a subsidiary range running towards the east; nevertheless from its summit the spectator commands the entire gigantic net-work of cells that forms the mountain-system of the island. He sees the main chain close before him, and from this backbone the ribs running out on each side in parallel ranges, with valleys between, which are inhabited and cultivated. Each of these valleys is traversed by a stream, while from the principal range run also the three largest rivers of the island—towards the east coast, the Golo and Tavignano; towards the west, the Liamone.
Glancing from the summit of Rotondo on the scene in the immediate vicinity, the eye is startled and affrighted at these vast and desolate wastes of rock, and the giant ruins of shattered crag and cliff lying around. Huge blocks are tumbled about here in a wild chaos, like monuments of the struggle of the spirits of the elements with the light of heaven. Frightfully steep walls of rock form a net-work of dreary valleys. In the centre of most of them lies a little motionless lake, blue, gray, or deep black, according as it receives light from the sky or shadow from the cliffs. I counted several such lakes not far off, Rinoso, Mello, Nielluccio, Pozzolo, from which brooks run to the Restonica, and Oriente, the principal fountain-head of the Restonica itself. Farther to the north-west I had before me the famous pastoral highlands of Niolo, the most elevated basin of the island, with its black lake Nino, from which the Tavignano flows.
These diminutive lakes are all of great depth, and swarming with trout.
As you stand on the summit you hear a continual sound of rushing waters; part of them are forcing their way under ground. This rigid, blasted wilderness, we perceive, overflows with living fountains, which descend to bless the valleys, and there make culture and human society possible; far down on the lower declivities of these mountains the eye catches here and there a paese and green gardens, and patches of yellow field.
Clouds began to gather round the peak; we had to descend. Returning, we took the difficult route by the Lago di Pozzolo. In this direction rises, black and jagged, the colossal Frate, the mightiest granite pyramid of Rotondo. Chaotic debris covers its huge base, which sinks into the dreary glen of the Pozzolo. That blue wonder-flower, which Fiordalisa had said I should find, was growing in the crevices of the rocks. Angelo had plucked one, and cried to me: Ecco, ecco la fiore?—see, see the flower! I took it from his hand; it was our Forget-me-not. On the summit of Rotondo itself, I saw camomile, the amaranth, and the ranunculus, growing in abundance, and our own violets graced the very edge of the snow-fields.
It was with great difficulty that we succeeded in scrambling over the stones of Frate, and a strip of snow threatened at last to block up the way altogether. The goat-herd proposed making a détour to avoid it, but as a North-Prussian I was not inclined so readily to succumb, and could not resist the temptation of a capital slide. I accordingly placed myself on Angelo's pelone, and made the descent. I had thus the pleasure of a little sledging-trip beneath the summer glow of an Italian sun, and under the 45th degree of latitude.
We breakfasted at the foot of another cone, and, refreshed with some bread, and a draught from a neighbouring brook, pursued our way downwards. I looked round in vain for the wild animals that haunt the rocks of Monte Rotondo—the Muffro namely, or wild sheep—and the bandits. Although Angelo assured me there were plenty of them in the clefts and ravines that we passed, I could discover none. The only wild creature I saw on these heights was the pretty mountain-finch of Monte Rotondo—a bird with gray body, and red, white, and black wings.
The Corsican wild sheep, the Muffro or Mufflone, is one of the most remarkable products of the island. It is a beautiful, strong-limbed animal, with spiral horns, and silky hair of a brownish-black. It inhabits the highest regions of eternal snow, mounting constantly higher as the summer sun melts the snow from the hills. By day it frequents the shores of the lakes, where it finds pasturage; at night it retires again to the snow. The muffro sleeps on the snow, and the female drops its young on the snow. Like the chamois, the muffro posts sentinels while feeding. Sometimes, in severe winters, when deep snow covers their pasture-grounds, these wild sheep appear in herds among the tame goats, and they are frequently to be seen in the valleys of Vivario, Niolo, and Guagno, feeding peaceably among the flocks of the shepherds. The young animal may be tamed, the old not. They are frequently hunted, and when shots are heard echoing from rock to rock up among the hills, people know that men are stalking the muffro or the bandit. Both are lawful game, brothers of the mountain-fastnesses, and both climb to the eternal snow.
After a descent of three hours we reached the cabins, and the foul atmosphere of these wretched hovels contrasted so disagreeably with the pure ether I had been breathing, that I did not rest more than an hour till I had the mule saddled, and put myself on the road for Corte. I bade the good people of Co di Mozzo a hearty farewell, and wished that their flocks might increase and multiply like the flocks of Jacob. They accompanied me to the gate of the enclosure; and as I rode away, men and children saluted me with an honest burst of evvivas.
A ride of some hours brought me once more to the region of chestnuts and citrons, and I had thus, in one day, from the heights of perpetual snow to the gardens of Corte, travelled through three distinct zones of climate, which was like journeying from the arctic winter of Norway to the countries of southern Europe.
I was not destined to leave the quiet Corte without some slightly unpleasant recollections, and that owing to my guide of Monte Rotondo. It was not till after I had returned to the town that I learned to what a furious and passionate individual I had trusted myself. Although he had told me a falsehood, and, proving to be unacquainted with the road to the summit, had compelled me to take the goat-herd Angelo as guide, I gave him the full hire we had agreed on. But the fellow, in the most impudent way, demanded half as much again. The vehement language on both sides drew the notice of some Corsican gentlemen, who took my part. "This is a stranger," said one of them to the guide, "and with us the stranger is always in the right." I replied to the polite speaker, "that I claimed my rights not as a stranger, but as a man, and that I should instantly have recourse to the authorities of the town, if the rascal continued to molest me." The latter threw his wages on the table, and stormed out of the room, exclaiming that he should know how to have his revenge on the German. On this the landlady of the locanda came to me and bade me be on my guard, as the fellow was passionate beyond all bounds, and last year had stabbed a man in the market-place.
Somewhat anxious, I asked the reason. "Because," said the landlady, "the Lucchese had struck his little brother for hanging on to his cart, as children do. The boy ran with his complaint to his brother, who instantly rushed out with his dagger, and murdered the other with one blow."
"How was he punished?" "With five months' imprisonment; for somehow or other the murder could not be properly proved." "Now, I confess—la giustizia Corsa è un poco corta—your Corsican justice is a little short; but, my good woman, you knew the ungovernable temper of this man—you knew he had already shed blood, and yet you yourself engaged me this devil for a guide, and allowed an unarmed stranger to enter the hills with him!"
"I thought, sir, you would see it in his eyes, and I gave you a wink once or twice, too. The fellow had offered himself, and if I had been the reason of your sending him away, then I should have got myself into trouble."
I now remembered that the good woman had asked me as I was going off with the guide: "When do you expect to return?" and that when I said, "In two days," she shrugged her shoulders, and seemed to intimate something with her eyes.
"Very well," I said to the woman, "I shall not give the man a single quattrino more than was agreed on. On that my mind is made up."
He came in the evening and took away quietly enough the money I had thrown down. But although this looked like an admission of his misconduct, I thought it best to maintain a sharp look-out, and did not go beyond the gates after night-fall.
The following evening I took a walk in the company of a Corsican officer whose acquaintance I had made. Outside the gate I witnessed a slight specimen of Corsican temperament. A youth of about fifteen had tied a horse to a fence, and was throwing stones at it, quite beside himself with rage, and howling out his fury like some maddened beast. The poor animal had probably offended him by a fit of obstinacy. I stood looking at him, and provoked at such malignant brutality, at last called to him to cease. Instantly my companion said to me: "For Heaven's sake come away, and be quiet." I obeyed, not a little struck with the scene, and the suppressed tones in which my companion had addressed me. This, too, was a glimpse of the state of Corsican society.
Shortly after, the youth flew past on the horse like a demon, his hair streaming, his face on flame, his eyes still sparkling with fury.
I felt deeply at that moment that I was among barbarians, and a sudden longing for Florence and its mild Italians filled me.
But there was still another disagreeable little incident in store for me. We had not gone a mile further into the hills, when I saw my guide walking along a height a little distance from the road, his gun upon his shoulder. He sat down on a rock, resting his piece across his knee. I did not know whether he still bore me a grudge, and meant mischief, but it was possible. I pointed him out to my companion, and continued my walk past him, not choosing to show any signs of fear; but I felt uncomfortable. "He will not shoot at you," said the officer, "unless you have offended him by some injurious word. But if you have done that, no saying what may happen; these men will stand no insult." He did not shoot, for which I was obliged to the bloodthirsty vampire, or the poor devil, let me rather call him—for nature sins here more than man. The blood that is shed among the Corsican hills is seldom shed from such a despicable motive as lust of gold—almost always from false notions of honour. The Corsican Vendetta is a chivalrous duel for life and death.
Travelling from Corte to Ajaccio, you keep ascending for several leagues till you reach Monte d'Oro; the road leads southwards through a beautiful and well-cultivated undulating region, full of magnificent chestnut-groves. Nothing can be more cheerful than the landscapes of the canton of Serraggio, formerly the pieve of Venaco. Brooks which descend from Monte Rotondo water here a lovely green country, on whose eminences little hamlets stand, as Pietro, Casa Nova, Riventosa, and Poggio.
Poggio di Venaco preserves the memory of the handsome Arrigo Colonna, who was Count of Corsica in the tenth century. As the traveller wanders onwards, he lights every now and then on romantic old traditions, which keep his imagination busy, and form great part of his pleasure. Arrigo was so beautiful in person, and courteous and graceful in manner, that he was called the Bel-Messere; and by this name he still lives in the mouths of the people. His wife, too, was a beautiful and noble woman, and his seven children were all fair and young. But his foes were resolved to rob him of his authority, and a fierce Sardinian conspired with them against his life. One day, the assassins fell upon him and stabbed him, and they took his seven children and threw them all into the lake "of the seven bowls." When this wicked deed had been done, a voice was heard in the air, which wailed and cried, "Bel-Messere is dead! Luckless Corsica, hope for no happiness more!" All the people raised a lament for Bel-Messere; but his wife took shield and spear, and hastened at the head of her vassals to the castle of Tralavedo, to which the murderers had retired, and she burned down the castle, and put all the murderers to the sword. Still many a night on the green hills of Venaco nine ghosts may be seen wandering about; these are the ghosts of Bel-Messere, his wife, and the seven poor children.
It was Sunday. The people were walking about in the villages, or, oftener, they were to be seen, like their fathers in times long gone by, sitting round the church;—a beautiful picture in the Sabbath stillness, men peacefully keeping the holiday of God's rest. But even on Sunday, and before the church-door, there comes a sudden musket-shot sometimes, and then the scene changes.
In the neighbourhood of Vivario the country becomes wilder, and the eminences more considerable. Many a passer-by stops a while at the threshold of the little church of Vivario, and looks at a gravestone there. A verse of the Bible in Latin is engraved on it—Maledictus qui percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis populus amen—Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly, and all the people shall say, Amen. The stone tells a Vendetta story of the seventeenth century; under it the avenger of blood lies buried. Blessed be the memory of the priest of Vivario, who took this curse from the Bible and engraved it upon the stone. They say it is the talisman of Vivario, for the last Vendetta of the village is thereon inscribed. Would that the hand that wrote it had been the hand of a giant, and had written in giant letters over all Corsica—Maledictus qui percusserit clam proximum suum, et dicet omnis populus amen!
In a lonely and desolate part of the mountains of Vivario stands a little blockhouse, with a garrison of ten men. The large valley of the Tavignano ends here, and a range of heights forms the water-shed between it and the Gravone, which flows in the opposite direction, towards Ajaccio. On the boundary line between the two valleys stand the two snow-capped mountains, Monte Renoso and Monte d'Oro, which latter attains an elevation only a few metres less than that of Rotondo, and surpasses it in grandeur of form. For many hours the traveller has this mountain constantly before his eye.
The road passes between the two mountains, through the glorious forest of Vizzavona. It consists mainly of larches, which are frequently 120 feet in height, and twenty-one in thickness. Of all the fir species this mighty, broad-branched, fragrant larch is probably the finest, next to the cedar; and as I have no acquaintance with the cedars of Asia I may say that the Corsican larch is the most imposing tree I ever beheld. To see it in its silent, gloomy majesty on the mighty granite rocks of these hills was always a high enjoyment for me. It well befits this imperial tree to stand on granite. It towers high above the cliffs, which its roots victoriously pierce; and on many spots, known only to the eagle and the wild sheep, it rises in solitary majesty. There are magnificent specimens of various other kinds of firs in the forest, red beeches, and evergreen oaks (ilex). It shelters abundance of game, particularly deer, which are in Corsica of no great size; the wild swine frequent the regions nearer the coast, where they are eagerly hunted.
The forest of Vizzavona is, next to that of Aitone in the canton of Evisa, the largest in Corsica. All these forests are in the mountainous districts. Some belong to the state, most of them to the communes. Nothing, comparatively speaking, has yet been made of them. I observed a snake sunning itself by the wayside. Corsica has only two species of snakes, and no poisonous animals except a spider called Malmignatto—the bite of which produces a sudden chill all over the body, and sometimes death—and the venomous ant Innafantato.
It was about noon when I passed through the forest. There was a suffocating heat in the atmosphere, but the wood offered its cool springs. Everywhere they trickle down the rocks to swell the waters of the Gravone; their water is cold and pleasant. Seneca can never have tasted the Corsican mountain streams, else he would not have said in his epigram that Corsica could not afford a draught of water.
At length I reached the ridge of the hills, at the highest point on the road to Ajaccio, 3500 feet above the level of the sea. This is the Foce, or Pass of Vizzavona, frequently mentioned in the Corsican popular songs.
The road now descends into the valley of Gravone. Two chains of mountains confine this fruitful valley. The northern, running out from Monte d'Oro, ends above Ajaccio in the Punta della Parata. It separates the basin of the Gravone from that of the Liamone. The southern runs out in a parallel direction from Monte Renoso, and separates the valleys of the Gravone and the Prunelli. On both sides of the Gravone stand villages on the hills. They have a more cheerful appearance than any I have ever seen in Corsica.
The first village we enter in this canton is Bocognano, which lies near the mouth of the wild gorge of Vizzavona. On every side rise dark, wooded hills with snowy summits; the whole region is of a stern, impressive character. They are herdsmen that dwell here—poor men, but stout in heart and strong in arm. They live on milk, or on chestnuts. Many manufacture the pelone. Every one goes armed in this district. The sight of these powerful men, with their double-barrels and carchera, and in the brown woollen blouse, accords well with the gloomy Alpine heights and the pine-forests all around. These Corsican highlanders look as if they were made of iron, like the fusils which they carry. The people here seemed to be still sticking fast in all the rust and rudeness of the Middle Ages.
The road continues to descend towards Ajaccio. At length we descried the magnificent gulf. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when we gained the neighbourhood of the city. The richer cultivation of the heights, vineyards, and olive-orchards, and the fertile plain of Campoloro, announced the vicinity of the capital of Corsica. It showed itself as a row of white houses stretching into the gulf, at the foot of a range of hills, and surrounded by villas. Through the avenue of elms, which leads along the gulf into the town, I now, with joyous emotion, entered the little native city of the man who convulsed the world.
Ajaccio lies at the northern end of one of the most magnificent gulfs in the world. The lines of its two opposite coasts are of unequal length. The northern is the shorter; it runs out in a westerly direction to the Punta della Parata, off which lie the Isole Sanguinarie, or Bloody Islands. The southern side of the gulf stretches from north to south in a long and very irregular line to Cape Muro, on rounding which you enter the Bay of Valinco.
No villages are seen on the northern shore; on the southern but few, with here and there a solitary tower or a lighthouse. Lofty hills rise over the northern end of the beautiful gulf; at their base lies the valley of the Gravone, ending towards the sea in the fertile plain of Campo di Loro. The situation of Ajaccio has an astonishing resemblance to that of Naples.
It is said that Ajaccio is one of the oldest cities in Corsica. According to the fable of some chroniclers, it derives its name from the Telamonian Ajax; according to others, it was founded by Agazzo, the son of the Trojan prince Corso, who wandered with Æneas into the western Mediterranean, carried off Sica, the niece of Dido, and thus gave the island the name of Corsica. Ptolemy places the ancient city of Urcinium on the Gulf of Ajaccio, supposed to be the Adjacium of the earliest period of the Middle Ages, a town which is always mentioned along with the oldest in the island—with Aleria, Mariana, Nebium, and Sagona, cities which now no longer exist.
The ancient Ajaccio, however, did not occupy the site of the present town; it lay on an eminence farther to the north. The hill is called San Giovanni; on its summit lie the ruins of an old castle, named Castello Vecchio, and there formerly lay near them the remains of an ancient cathedral, in which it was customary for the bishops of Ajaccio to be consecrated, long after it had fallen into decay. These ruins have vanished; nothing now betrays the former existence of a city on this spot. But many ancient Roman coins have been found in the vineyards; also oval-shaped sarcophagi of terracotta, always containing a skeleton and a key. It is said that the vaulted tombs of the Moorish kings were also formerly shown here; but they have disappeared.
The new town and the citadel were founded by the Bank of St. George of Genoa in the year 1492. It was the residence of a lieutenant of the Governor of Bastia, and did not become the capital of the island till the year 1811, when it was elevated to its new dignity at the instance of Madame Letitia and Cardinal Fesch, who wished in this way to give distinction to their own and the Emperor's birthplace.
The best view of the town and its environs is from the hill of San Giovanni. It presents one of the prettiest pictures that can be imagined, and is equalled by no other city in Corsica. The distance is incomparable. Cloud-topped hills stretching far into the interior, the majestic gulf in azure splendour, an Italian vegetation and a southern sky—no finer combination could be thought of; and here in the midst of it lies a quite idyllic, silent, innocent little town of 11,500 inhabitants, concealed among the verdure of its elms, the mistress of a region which seems intended to be the environment of one of the capitals of the world.
Ajaccio lies on a tongue of land, the extremity of which is occupied by the castle. Portions of the town stretch on each side of this tongue along the gulf. The avenue of elms and planes which leads into the city is continued along its main street—the Cours Napoleon, which is properly the prolongation of the road from Corte. Part of it has had to be blasted through the rocks, two of which still stand at the entrance of the town, close to the houses. In the Corso itself the elms give place to orange-trees of considerable size, which give the street a rich and festive look. The houses are high, but destitute of architectural merit. The gray jalousies are characteristic; this is the colour preferred in Corsica, while in Italy they are usually of a lively green. The gray gives to the buildings a dead, monotonous air. All the more considerable edifices of the Corso stand on the right side; the little Theatre, the Prefecture—a handsome building—and the military barracks.
The rural quiet pervading these streets of Ajaccio surprised me; but their names speak loudly to the traveller, and relate the history of Napoleon. You read Cours Napoleon, Rue Napoleon, Rue Fesch, Rue Cardinal, Place Letitia, and Rue du Roi de Rome, which last awakens mournful recollections. The memory of Napoleon is the proper soul of the town, and you saunter onwards, out of one little street into another, musing on the wonderful man and his childhood, and soon you have wandered through them all. The Rue Fesch runs parallel with the Cours Napoleon; the former leads to the spacious Place du Diamant, which lies on the shore, and has beautiful view of the gulf and its southern coast; the latter ends in the market-place (du marché), and leads to the harbour. These are the two principal streets and squares of Ajaccio. Narrow lanes connect them, and intersect the whole of the tongue of land. The silence invites memory and thought, and silently the mirror of the blue gulf stretches away before the view. You see it from almost every street. The eye is nowhere imprisoned by walls, for the main streets are wide, the squares spacious, planted with green trees; and the sea, and green olive-clad hills, which rise close upon the city, look in upon you wherever you go or stand. Ajaccio is at once an inland and a coast town—you live there in the heart of Nature.
In the cool of the evening, the Corso and Diamond Place grew livelier. The military band began to play in the Place; the people gathered here and there in groups, or moved about. Most of the women wore black veils, those of the middle classes were enveloped in the black faldetta. It was easy to imagine you were in some city of Spain.
The Ajaccians have the finest promenades in the world, whether they choose the beautiful esplanade which has so romantic a name, or the walks along the gulf among alleys of elms, and through vineyards and olive-gardens. I know few promenades from which so fine a view is to be had as that from the quiet Place du Diamant in Ajaccio. Immediately in front of it the murmuring sea; towards the land cheerful rows of houses; among them, a stately military hospital and a handsome Catholic College; close over these houses a green hill. A stone breastwork runs along the side next the gulf; a few steps bring you to the strand, which is fringed by an alley of trees.
I found nothing in Ajaccio more pleasant than to wander about on the Place du Diamant in the evening, when the west wind blew fresh over the gulf, or to sit on the breastwork, and feast my eyes on the magic panorama of sea and hills. The sky of Italy is then lit up with a brilliance as of fairy-land; the air is so clear that the Milky Way and the planet Venus throw long lines of radiance across the gulf, and the waves reflect a mild splendour. Where they are in motion, or are furrowed by a passing skiff, they tremble with phosphorescent sparks. Above, the shore wraps itself in night; the beacons gleam from the headlands, and on the hills you see in many places great fires blazing. They are burning copsewood there—a practice common in the month of August, in order to gain land for tillage, which is at the same time manured by the ashes. These fires continue to burn for days. During the day they roll white clouds of smoke over the hills, at night they glare over the gulf like volcanoes, and then the resemblance to the Gulf of Naples becomes striking. A magnificent illumination may thus be enjoyed every evening on the Diamond Place of Ajaccio.
The market-place is no less beautiful, though it affords a less comprehensive view. You see from it the safe and beautiful harbour, confined by a granite mole erected by Napoleon. On the side of the harbour, a beautiful quay of granite bounds the market-place, which, planted with trees, has a look of rural peace. At its entrance stands the principal fountain in Ajaccio, a large cube of marble, from the sides of which the water gushes into semi-circular basins. It is thronged from morning till night with women and children drawing water; and I could never look on these groups without being reminded of Old Testament scenes of the same character. In warm countries, the wells are the very fountains of poetry and sociable intercourse; well and hearth are the time-honoured centres round which human society has always gathered.—The women here do not draw their water in the antique vessels of metal used in Bastia, but in cask-shaped pitchers of terracotta, the handles of which lie across the mouths. These pitchers are also ancient; and another kind of earthenware pitcher, common in Ajaccio, with a long slender neck, has a thoroughly Etruscan look. The poor inhabitants of the barren island of Capraja support themselves partly by making these vessels, which are sent to great distances.
On the same market-place, behind the fountain, close upon the harbour and before the handsome town-house, stands a marble statue of Napoleon, on an excessively high and disagreeably tapering pedestal of granite. The inscription is as follows: "His native city to the Emperor Napoleon, on the 5th May 1850, the second year of the presidency of Louis Napoleon." Ajaccio had long been endeavouring to raise a monument to Napoleon, and always in vain. The arrival of a statue in Corsica was therefore an event of no small importance for the island. It chanced that the Bonaparte family on one occasion sent Signor Ramolino the statue of a Ganymede. The people seeing it as it was taken out of the vessel, took the eagle of Ganymede for the imperial eagle, and Ganymede himself for Napoleon; they assembled in the market-place, and demanded that the statue should forthwith be placed on the above-mentioned fountain, that they might at last have the great Napoleon in marble in the market-place. The worthy Corsicans, in thus turning the Trojan youth Ganymede into their countryman Napoleon, certainly seem to give some colour to the old fable of the chroniclers, that the Ajaccians are descended from a Trojan prince.
The beautiful statue of Napoleon, by the Florentine Bartolini, was originally intended for Ajaccio; but a disagreement arose about the price (60,000 francs), and Bartolini's work never became one of the ornaments of Ajaccio. The statue of Napoleon in the market-place is by Laboureur, and is only of mediocre merit; but its position, in full view of the gulf, gives it an admirable local effect. It is a consular statue. The consul looks from the pedestal upon the sea, turning from his little native town to the world-embracing element. He wears the Roman toga, and on his head a wreath of bays; his right hand grasps a rudder, which rests upon a ball representing the globe. The idea is happy; for in sight of the gulf the rudder appears a quite natural symbol, and is doubly significant in the hand of an islander. The mind of the beholder dwells here not on the history of the complete, but of the incipient ruler; for he sees around him the little world of Ajaccio, in which the mightiest European man went about as child and youth, unconscious who he was, and for what fate had destined him. Then the memory wanders from the market-place to the gulf, and sees the ship anchor there, which bore the General Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt to France. During the night he sat on board that vessel, eagerly reading such newspapers as could be procured for him in Ajaccio; and it was here that he formed the resolution to seize that rudder with which he was to rule not France alone, but an empire and a hemisphere, till it broke in his hand, and the man of Corsica went to wreck on the island of St. Helena.
Very few vessels, some luggers, and one or two schooners, lie in the harbour. Not, like the Bay of San Fiorenzo, exposed to the maestrale, or north-west wind, but protected by its shores from every storm, this magnificent gulf is capable of sheltering in its roads the largest fleets. But the port is completely dull, and destitute of trade. Once a week, on Saturday, comes a steamer from Marseilles, and brings news of the world, and supplies of necessary articles. I have often heard Corsicans complain that the native city of Napoleon, though possessing the advantages of an incomparable situation, and an excellent climate, was nothing more than an ordinary little provincial town of France. You only need to walk round the market-place, where most of the shops are, on the ground-floors of the houses, to see how slow the sale of goods is, and how limited the native industry. You do not see a single shop where articles of luxury are sold—nothing but the most indispensable handicrafts, such as shoemaking and tailoring; and the wares that look most like to articles of luxury, seem old-fashioned and spoiled.
I found only one book-shop in Ajaccio: it was kept by a dealer in small wares, who sold soap, cordage, knives, and baskets as well as books. The town-house, however, contains, for Ajaccio, a highly considerable library, of 27,000 volumes. It was founded by Lucian Bonaparte, and the opinion is, that he has done greater service to his country in connexion with this library, than by his epic in twelve cantos: La Cyrneïde. The prefecture also possesses a valuable library, which is particularly rich in archives and important documents of Corsican history.
In the town-house is also preserved the collection of pictures which Cardinal Fesch bequeathed to his native city. It consists of 1000 paintings. The poor citizens of Ajaccio have no proper museum in which to hang these; they have consequently lain for years in a lumber-room. Fesch also proposed to make his house an institution for the Jesuits; latterly he made it a college, which now bears his name. It has a principal, and twelve teachers for various branches of science and literature.
Ajaccio is very poor in public institutions and public buildings. Its most important edifice is the house of the Bonapartes.
The narrow street of St. Charles issues upon a little square. An elm stands there before an oldish three-storied house, the plaster of which has been coloured a yellowish-gray; it has a flat roof, and a balustrade above it, a front of six windows in breadth, and doors that look greatly decayed. On the corner of this house you read the words: "Place Letitia."
No marble tablet tells the stranger who has come from Italy, where the houses of great men always bear inscriptions, that he stands before the house of the Bonapartes. He knocks in vain at the door; no voice answers, and all the windows are closely veiled with gray jalousies, as if the house were in a state of siege from the Vendetta. Not a human being is stirring upon the square; a deathlike stillness rests upon the neighbourhood, as if the name of Napoleon had frightened it into silence, or scared all else away.
At length an old man appeared at the window of a house close by, and requested me to return in two hours, when he should be able to give me the key.
Bonaparte's house, which has, I am assured, sustained but slight alteration, though no palace, has plainly been the dwelling of a patrician family. Its appearance shows this, and it is without doubt a palace compared with the village-cabin in which Pasquale Paoli was born. It is roomy, handsome, and convenient. But the rooms are destitute of furniture; the tapestries alone have been left on the walls, and they are decayed. The floor, which, as is usual in Corsica, is laid out in small hexagonal red flags, is here and there ruinous. The darkness produced in the rooms by the closed jalousies, and their emptiness, made them quite dismal.
Once, in the time of the beautiful Letitia, this house was alive with the busy stir of a numerous family, and brilliant with joyous hospitality. Now, it is like a tomb, and in vain you look around you for a single object on which fancy may hang associations with the history of its enigmatic inhabitants. The naked walls can tell no tale.
I do not know when the Casa Bonaparte was erected, but it can hardly be very old. It was built, no doubt, when the Genoese were supreme in the island, perhaps when Louis Quatorze was filling the world with his own fame, and with the fame of France. I thought of the time when the master of the craftsmen who erected it pronounced over the house, on its completion, the customary blessing, and when, according to ancient usage, the family for whom it had been built was solemnly conducted into it by an assemblage of kinsfolk—all alike unconscious that the whim of fortune would one day shower upon its roof the crowns of kingdoms and of empires, and that it was yet to cradle the race of princes who were to share among them the thrones of a continent.
The excited fancy seeks them in these rooms, and sees them assembled round their mother, children in no respect differing from ordinary children—boys who toil over their Plutarch and their Cæsar, schoolmastered by their grave father, or their granduncle Lucian, and three young sisters who grow up thoughtlessly, and rather wild, like their playmates, in the half-barbarous island-town. There is Joseph, the eldest, and there Napoleon, the second son, with Lucian, Louis, and Jerome; there Caroline, Eliza, and Paulina, the children of a notary of moderate income, who is constantly and to no purpose carrying on lawsuits with the Jesuits of Ajaccio about a contested property, of which, with his large family, he stands in great need. For it is a matter of much anxiety to him, how his children are to be provided for. How will they prosper in the world? and in what way secure for themselves a respectable livelihood?
And lo! these same children one day put forth their hands, one after another, and grasp the mightiest crowns of the earth, tear them from the heads of the most unapproachable majesties of Europe, wear them before all the world, are embraced as brothers and brothers-in-law by emperors and kings, while great nations fall submissive at their feet, and abandon to the sons of the notary of Ajaccio their country, their wealth, and their blood. Napoleon is European Emperor, Joseph king of Spain, Louis king of Holland, Jerome king of Westphalia, Paulina a princess of Italy, Eliza a princess of Italy, Caroline queen of Naples. In this little house were so many crowned potentates born and brought up; their mother a woman whose name the world had never heard, daughter of a citizen of a small, obscure, provincial town, Letitia Ramolino, who married at the age of fourteen a man as little known to fame as herself. It may be said with truth, that in her labours this mother travailed with the world's history.
There is no fable in all the Arabian Nights apparently more fabulous than the story of the Bonaparte family. That this romance has, however, realized itself in the quiet, sober days of our modern era, must be regarded as a great fact in history, and as a piece of great good fortune. The history of humanity, clogged with political precedent, and paralysed by bureaus and red tape, has thereby been shaken with earthquake force into fresh activity, and flushed with a new life, and man has been shown to be stronger than a supposed political necessity. Human power and human passion have been freed from the spell under which the traditional limitations of rank had bound them, and it has been proved that the individual, though born among the dust, may become anything and everything, because men are equal. That the history of the Bonapartes should appear fabulous is the fault of the mediæval tinge that still attaches to our ideas of life, and of the received notions as to the impassable barriers interposed by social difference. Napoleon is the political Faust. His historical greatness does not lie in his battles, but in his revolutionary nature. He overthrew the political gods of tradition. The history of this predestined man is therefore very simple, human, and natural, but it cannot yet be written.
History, too, is Nature. There is a chain of causes and effects, and what we call genius, or a great man, is always the necessary result of definite conditions.
More than a thousand years of almost uninterrupted conflict between Corsica and her oppressors preceded the birth of the great conqueror Napoleon, in whose nature this rock-bound island, and this insular people, steeled in conflict, and forcibly thrown back upon itself by the narrow space to which it was confined, created for themselves an organ whose law was—illimitedness. The ascending series was this: the Corsican bandit, the Corsican soldier, Renuccio della Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori, Pasquale Paoli, Napoleon.
I entered a little room with blue tapestry, and two windows, one of which, with a balcony before it, looked into a court, the other into the street. You see here a wall-press, behind a tapestried door, and a fireplace with a mantelpiece of yellow marble ornamented with some mythological reliefs. In this room, on the 15th of August 1769, Napoleon was born. It is a strange feeling, hard to put in language, which takes possession of the soul on the spot hallowed as the birthplace of a great man. Something sacred, mystic, a consecrated atmosphere, pervades it. It is as if you were casting a glance behind the curtain of Nature, where she creates in silence the incomprehensible organs of her action. But man discerns only the phenomenal, he attempts in vain to ascertain the how. To stand in silence before the unsearchable mysteries of Nature, and see with wonder the radiant forms that ascend from the darkness—that is human religion. For the thoughtful man nothing is more deeply impressive than the starry sky of night, or the starry sky of history. I saw other rooms, the ballroom of the family, Madame Letitia's room, Napoleon's little room where he slept, and that in which he studied. The two little wall-presses are still to be seen there in which his school-books stood. Books stand in them at present. With eager curiosity I took out some of them, as if they were Napoleon's; they were yellow with age—law-books, theological treatises, a Livy, a Guicciardini, and others, probably the property of the Pietra Santa family, who are related to the Bonapartes, and to whom their house in Ajaccio now belongs.
It is well to review in connexion with this house the early history of Napoleon, about which our information is still insufficient. I shall relate what I know of it by hearsay or reading. I am largely indebted to the lately published work of the Corsican Nasica—Mémoires sur l'Enfance et la Jeunesse de Napoléon jusqu'à l'age de vingt-trois ans. It is dedicated to the uncle's nephew, and is written without talent or insight, but contains facts which are undoubtedly correct, and some valuable documents.