BOOK V.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.
CHAPTER I.
VESCOVATO AND THE CORSICAN HISTORIANS.
Some miles to the southwards of Bastia, on the heights of the east coast, lies Vescovato, a spot celebrated in Corsican history. Leaving the coast-road at the tower of Buttafuoco, you turn upwards into the hills, the way leading through magnificent forests of chestnuts, which cover the heights on every side. The general name for this beautiful little district is Casinca; and the region round Vescovato is honoured with the special appellation of Castagniccia, or the land of chestnuts.
I was curious to see this Corsican paese, in which Count Matteo Buttafuoco once offered Rousseau an asylum; I expected to find a village such as I had already seen frequently enough among the mountains. I was astonished, therefore, when I saw Vescovato before me, lost in the green hills among magnificent groves of chestnuts, oranges, vines, fruit-trees of every kind, a mountain brook gushing down through it, the houses of primitive Corsican cast, yet here and there not without indications of architectural taste. I now could not but own to myself that of all the retreats that a misanthropic philosopher might select, the worst was by no means Vescovato. It is a mountain hermitage, in the greenest, shadiest solitude, with the loveliest walks, where you can dream undisturbed, now among the rocks by the wild stream, now under a blossom-laden bush of erica beside an ivy-hung cloister, or you are on the brow of a hill from which the eye looks down upon the plain of the Golo, rich and beautiful as a nook of paradise, and upon the sea.
A bishop built the place; and the bishops of the old town of Mariana, which lay below in the plain, latterly lived here.
Historic names and associations cluster thickly round Vescovato; especially is it honoured by its connexion with three Corsican historians of the sixteenth century—Ceccaldi, Monteggiani, and Filippini. Their memory is still as fresh as their houses are well preserved. The Curato of the place conducted me to Filippini's house, a mean peasant's cottage. I could not repress a smile when I was shown a stone taken from the wall, on which the most celebrated of the Corsican historians had in the fulness of his heart engraved the following inscription:—Has Ædes ad suum et amicorum usum in commodiorem Formam redegit anno MDLXXV., cal. Decemb. A. Petrus Philippinus Archid. Marian. In sooth, the pretensions of these worthy men were extremely humble. Another stone exhibits Filippini's coat of arms—his house, with a horse tied to a tree. It was the custom of the archdeacon to write his history in his vineyard, which they still show in Vescovato. After riding up from Mariana, he fastened his horse under a pine, and sat down to meditate or to write, protected by the high walls of his garden—for his life was in constant danger from the balls of his enemies. He thus wrote the history of the Corsicans under impressions highly exciting and dramatic.
Filippini's book is the leading work on Corsican history, and is of a thoroughly national character. The Corsicans may well be proud of it. It is an organic growth from the popular mind of the country; songs, traditions, chronicles, and, latterly, professed and conscious historical writing, go to constitute the work as it now lies before us. The first who wrought upon it was Giovanni della Grossa, lieutenant and secretary of the brave Vincentello d'Istria. He collected the old legends and traditions, and proceeded as Paul Diaconus did in his history. He brought down the history of Corsica to the year 1464. His scholar, Monteggiani, continued it to the year 1525,—but this part of the history is meagre; then came Ceccaldi, who continued it to the year 1559; and Filippini, who brought it as far as 1594. Of the thirteen books composing the whole, he has, therefore, written only the last four; but he edited and gave form to the entire work, so that it now bears his name. The editio princeps appeared in Tournon in France, in 1594, in Italian, under the following title:—
"The History of Corsica, in which all things are recorded that have happened from the time that it began to be inhabited up till the year 1594. With a general description of the entire Island; divided into thirteen books, and commenced by Giovanni della Grossa, who wrote the first nine thereof, which were continued by Pier Antonio Monteggiani, and afterwards by Marc' Antonio Ceccaldi, and were collected and enlarged by the Very Reverend Antonpietro Filippini, Archidiaconus of Mariana, the last four being composed by himself. Diligently revised and given to the light by the same Archidiaconus. In Tournon. In the printing-house of Claudio Michael, Printer to the University, 1594."
Although an opponent of Sampiero, and though, from timidity, or from deliberate intent to falsify, frequently guilty of suppressing or perverting facts, he, nevertheless, told the Genoese so many bitter truths in his book, that the Republic did everything in its power to prevent its circulation. It had become extremely scarce when Pozzo di Borgo did his country the signal service of having it edited anew. The learned Corsican, Gregori, was the new editor, and he furnished the work with an excellent introduction; it appeared, as edited by Gregori, at Pisa, in the year 1827, in five volumes. The Corsicans are certainly worthy to have the documentary monuments of their history well attended to. Their modern historians blame Filippini severely for incorporating in his history all the traditions and fables of Grossa. For my part, I have nothing but praise to give him for this; his history must not be judged according to strict scientific rules; it possesses, as we have it, the high value of bearing the undisguised impress of the popular mind. I have equally little sympathy with the fault-finders in their depreciation of Filippini's talent. He is somewhat prolix, but his vein is rich; and a sound philosophic morality, based on accurate observation of life, pervades his writings. The man is to be held in honour; he has done his people justice, though no adherent of the popular cause, but a partisan of Genoa. Without Filippini, a great part of Corsican history would by this time have been buried in obscurity. He dedicated his work to Alfonso d'Ornano, Sampiero's son, in token of his satisfaction at the young hero's reconciling himself to Genoa, and even visiting that city.
"When I undertook to write the History," he says, "I trusted more to the gifts which I enjoy from nature, than to that acquired skill and polish which is expected in those who make similar attempts. I thought to myself that I should stand excused in the eyes of those who should read me, if they considered how great the want of all provision for such an undertaking is in this island (in which I must live, since it has pleased God to cast my lot here); so that scientific pursuits, of whatever kind, are totally impossible, not to speak of writing a pure and quite faultless style." There are other passages in Filippini, in which he complains with equal bitterness of the ignorance of the Corsicans, and their total want of cultivation in any shape. He does not even except the clergy, "among whom," says he, "there are hardly a dozen who have learned grammar; while among the Franciscans, although they have five-and-twenty convents, there are scarcely so many as eight lettered men; and thus the whole nation grows up in ignorance."
He never conceals the faults of his countrymen. "Besides their ignorance," he remarks, "one can find no words to express the laziness of the islanders where the tilling of the ground is concerned. Even the fairest plain in the world—the plain that extends from Aleria to Mariana—lies desolate; and they will not so much as drive away the fowls. But when it chances that they have become masters of a single carlino, they imagine that it is impossible now that they can ever want, and so sink into complete idleness."—This is a strikingly apt characterization of the Corsicans of the present day. "Why does no one prop the numberless wild oleasters?" asks Filippini; "why not the chestnuts? But they do nothing, and therefore are they all poor. Poverty leads to crime; and daily we hear of robberies. They also swear false oaths. Their feuds and their hatred, their little love and their little faithfulness, are quite endless; hence that proverb is true which we are wont to hear: 'The Corsican never forgives.' And hence arises all that calumniating, and all that backbiting, that we see perpetually. The people of Corsica (as Braccellio has written) are, beyond other nations, rebellious, and given to change; many are addicted to a certain superstition which they call Magonie, and thereto they use the men as women. There prevails here also a kind of soothsaying, which they practise with the shoulder-bones of dead animals."
Such is the dark side of the picture which the Corsican historian draws of his countrymen; and he here spares them so little, that, in fact, he merely reproduces what Seneca is said to have written of them in the lines—
"Prima est ulcisi lex, altera vivere raptu,
Tertia mentiri, quarta negare Deos."
On the other hand, in the dedication to Alfonso, he defends most zealously the virtues of his people against Tomaso Porcacchi Aretino da Castiglione, who had attacked them in his "Description of the most famous Islands of the World." "This man," says Filippini, "speaks of the Corsicans as assassins, which makes me wonder at him with no small astonishment, for there will be found, I may well venture to say, no people in the world among whom strangers are more lovingly handled, and among whom they can travel with more safety; for throughout all Corsica they meet with the utmost hospitality and courteousness, without having ever to expend the smallest coin for their maintenance." This is true; a stranger here corroborates the Corsican historian, after a lapse of three hundred years.
As in Vescovato we are standing on the sacred ground of Corsican historiography, I may mention a few more of the Corsican historians. An insular people, with a past so rich in striking events, heroic struggles, and great men, and characterized by a patriotism so unparalleled, might also be expected to be rich in writers of the class referred to; and certainly their numbers, as compared with the small population, are astonishing. I give only the more prominent names.
Next to Filippini, the most note-worthy of the Corsican historiographers is Petrus Cyrnæus, Archdeacon of Aleria, the other ancient Roman colony. He lived in the fifteenth century, and wrote, besides his Commentarium de Bello Ferrariensi, a History of Corsica extending down to the year 1482, in Latin, with the title, Petri Cyrnæi de rebus Corsicis libri quatuor. His Latin is as classical as that of the best authors of his time; breadth and vigour characterize his style, which has a resemblance to that of Sallust or Tacitus; but his treatment of his materials is thoroughly unartistic. He dwells longest on the siege of Bonifazio by Alfonso of Arragon, and on the incidents of his own life. Filippini did not know, and therefore could not use the work of Cyrnæus; it existed only in manuscript till brought to light from the library of Louis XV., and incorporated in Muratori's large work in the year 1738. The excellent edition (Paris, 1834) which we now possess we owe to the munificence of Pozzo di Borgo, and the literary ability of Gregori, who has added an Italian translation of the Latin text.
This author's estimate of the Corsicans is still more characteristic and intelligent than that of Filippini. Let us hear what he has to say, that we may see whether the present Corsicans have retained much or little of the nature of their forefathers who lived in those early times:—
"They are eager to avenge an injury, and it is reckoned disgraceful not to take vengeance. When they cannot reach him who has done the murder, then they punish one of his relations. On this account, as soon as a murder has taken place, all the relatives of the murderer instantly arm themselves in their own defence. Only children and women are spared." He describes the arms of the Corsicans of his time as follows: "They wear pointed helms, called cerbelleras; others also round ones; further daggers, spears four ells long, of which each man has two. On the left side rests the sword, on the right the dagger.
"In their own country, they are at discord; out of it, they hold fast to each other. Their souls are ready for death (animi ad mortem parati). They are universally poor, and despise trade. They are greedy of renown; gold and silver they scarcely use at all. Drunkenness they think a great disgrace. They seldom learn to read and write; few of them hear the orators or the poets; but in disputation they exercise themselves so continually, that when a cause has to be decided, you would think them all very admirable pleaders. Among the Corsicans, I never saw a head that was bald. The Corsicans are of all men the most hospitable. Their own wives cook their victuals for the highest men in the land. They are by nature inclined to silence—made rather for acting than for speaking. They are also the most religious of mortals.
"It is the custom to separate the men from the women, more especially at table. The wives and daughters fetch the water from the well; for the Corsicans have almost no menials. The Corsican women are industrious: you may see them, as they go to the fountain, bearing the pitcher on their head, leading the horse, if they have one, by a halter over their arm, and at the same time turning the spindle. They are also very chaste, and are not long sleepers.
"The Corsicans inter their dead expensively; for they bury them not without exequies, without laments, without panegyric, without dirges, without prayer. For their funeral solemnities are very similar to those of the Romans. One of the neighbours raises the cry, and calls to the nearest village: 'Ho there! cry to the other village, for such a one is just dead.' Then they assemble according to their villages, their towns, and their communities, walking one by one in a long line—first the men and then the women. When these arrive, all raise a great wailing, and the wife and brothers tear the clothes upon their breast. The women, disfigured with weeping, smite themselves on the bosom, lacerate the face, and tear out the hair.—All Corsicans are free."
The reader will have found that this picture of the Corsicans resembles in many points the description Tacitus gives us of the ancient Germans.
Corsican historiography has at no time flourished more than during the heroic fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it was silent during the seventeenth, because at that period the entire people lay in a state of death-like exhaustion; in the eighteenth, participating in the renewed vitality of the age, it again became active, and we have Natali's treatise Disinganno sulla guerra di Corsica, and Salvini's Giustificazione dell' Insurrezione—useful books, but of no great literary merit.
Dr. Limperani wrote a History of Corsica to the end of the seventeenth century, a work full of valuable materials, but prosy and long-winded. Very serviceable—in fact, from the documents it contains, indispensable—is the History of the Corsicans, by Cambiaggi, in four quarto volumes. Cambiaggi dedicated his work to Frederick the Great, the admirer of Pasquale Paoli and Corsican heroism.
Now that the Corsican people have lost their freedom, the learned patriots of Corsica—and Filippini would no longer have to complain of the dearth of literary cultivation among his countrymen—have devoted themselves with praiseworthy zeal to the history of their country. These men are generally advocates. We have, for example, Pompei's book, L'Etat actuel de la Corse; Gregori edited Filippini and Peter Cyrnæus, and made a collection of the Corsican Statutes—a highly meritorious work. These laws originated in the old traditionary jurisprudence of the Corsicans, which the democracy of Sampiero adopted, giving it a more definite and comprehensive form. They underwent further additions and improvements during the supremacy of the Genoese, who finally, in the sixteenth century, collected them into a code. They had become extremely scarce. The new edition is a splendid monument of Corsican history, and the codex itself does the Genoese much credit. Renucci, another talented Corsican, has written a Storia di Corsica, in two volumes, published at Bastia in 1833, which gives an abridgment of the earlier history, and a detailed account of events during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to 1830. The work is rich in material, but as a historical composition feeble. Arrighi wrote biographies of Sampiero and Pasquale Paoli. Jacobi's work in two volumes is the History of Corsica in most general use. It extends down to the end of the war of independence under Paoli, and is to be completed in a third volume. Jacobi's merit consists in having written a systematically developed history of the Corsicans, using all the available sources; his book is indispensable, but defective in critical acumen, and far from sufficiently objective. The latest book on Corsican history, is an excellent little compendium by Camillo Friess, keeper of the Archives in Ajaccio, who told me he proposed writing at greater length on the same subject. He has my best wishes for the success of such an undertaking, for he is a man of original and vigorous intellect. It is to be hoped he will not, like Jacobi, write his work in French, but, as he is bound in duty to his people, in Italian.
CHAPTER II.
ROUSSEAU AND THE CORSICANS.
I did not neglect to visit the house of Count Matteo Buttafuoco, which was at one time to have been the domicile of Rousseau. It is a structure of considerable pretensions, the stateliest in Vescovato. Part of it is at present occupied by Marshal Sebastiani, whose family belongs to the neighbouring village of Porta.
This Count Buttafuoco is the same man against whom Napoleon wrote an energetic pamphlet, when a fiery young democrat in Ajaccio. The Count was an officer in the French army when he invited Jean Jacques Rousseau to Vescovato. The philosopher of Geneva had, in his Contrat Social, written and prophesied as follows with regard to Corsica: "There is still one country in Europe susceptible of legislation—the island of Corsica. The vigour and perseverance displayed by the Corsicans, in gaining and defending their freedom, are such as entitle them to claim the aid of some wise man to teach them how to preserve it. I have an idea that this little island will one day astonish Europe." When the French were sending out their last and decisive expedition against Corsica, Rousseau wrote: "It must be confessed that your French are a very servile race, a people easily bought by despotism, and shamefully cruel to the unfortunate; if they knew of a free man at the other end of the world, I believe they would march all the way thither, for the mere pleasure of exterminating him."
I shall not affirm that this was a second prophecy of Rousseau's, but the first has certainly been fulfilled, for the day has come in which the Corsicans have astonished Europe.
The favourable opinion of the Corsican people, thus expressed by Rousseau, induced Paoli to invite him to Corsica in 1764, that he might escape from the persecution of his enemies in Switzerland. Voltaire, always enviously and derisively inclined towards Rousseau, had spread the malicious report that this offer of an asylum in Corsica was merely a ridiculous trick some one was playing on him. Upon this, Paoli had himself written the invitation. Buttafuoco had gone further; he had called upon the philosopher—of whom the Poles also begged a constitution—to compose a code of laws for the Corsicans. Paoli does not seem to have opposed the scheme, perhaps because he considered such a work, though useless for its intended purpose, still as, in one point of view, likely to increase the reputation of the Corsicans. The vain misanthrope thus saw himself in the flattering position of a Pythagoras, and joyfully wrote, in answer, that the simple idea of occupying himself with such a task elevated and inspired his soul; and that he should consider the remainder of his unhappy days nobly and virtuously spent, if he could spend them to the advantage of the brave Corsicans. He now, with all seriousness, asked for materials. The endless petty annoyances in which he was involved, prevented him ever producing the work. But what would have been its value if he had? What were the Corsicans to do with a theory, when they had already given themselves a constitution of practical efficiency, thoroughly popular, because formed on the material basis of their traditions and necessities?
Circumstances prevented Rousseau's going to Corsica—pity! He might have made trial of his theories there—for the island seems the realized Utopia of his views of that normal condition of society which he so lauds in his treatise on the question—Whether or not the arts and sciences have been beneficial to the human race? In Corsica, he would have had what he wanted, in plenty—primitive mortals in woollen blouses, living on goat's-milk and a few chestnuts, neither science nor art—equality, bravery, hospitality—and revenge to the death! I believe the warlike Corsicans would have laughed heartily to have seen Rousseau wandering about under the chestnuts, with his cat on his arm, or plaiting his basket-work. But Vendetta! vendetta! bawled once or twice, with a few shots of the fusil, would very soon have frightened poor Jacques away again. Nevertheless Rousseau's connexion with Corsica is memorable, and stands in intimate relation with the most characteristic features of his history.
In the letter in which he notifies to Count Buttafuoco his inability to accept his invitation, Rousseau writes: "I have not lost the sincere desire of living in your country; but the complete exhaustion of my energies, the anxieties I should incur, and the fatigues I should undergo, with other hindrances arising from my position, compel me, at least for the present, to relinquish my resolution; though, notwithstanding these difficulties, I find I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of utterly abandoning it. I am growing old; I am growing frail; my powers are leaving me; my wishes tempt me on, and yet my hopes grow dim. Whatever the issue may be, receive, and render to Signor Paoli, my liveliest, my heartfelt thanks, for the asylum which he has done me the honour to offer me. Brave and hospitable people! I shall never forget it so long as I live, that your hearts, your arms, were opened to me, at a time when there was hardly another asylum left for me in Europe. If it should not be my good fortune to leave my ashes in your island, I shall at least endeavour to leave there a monument of my gratitude; and I shall do myself honour, in the eyes of the whole world, when I call you my hosts and protectors. What I hereby promise to you, and what you may henceforth rely on, is this, that I shall occupy the rest of my life only with myself or with Corsica; all other interests are completely banished from my soul."
The concluding words promise largely; but they are in Rousseau's usual glowing and rhetorical vein. How singularly such a style, and the entire Rousseau nature, contrast with the austere taciturnity, the manly vigour, the wild and impetuous energy of the Corsican! Rousseau and Corsican seem ideas standing at an infinite distance apart—natures the very antipodes of each other, and yet they touch each other like corporeal and incorporeal, united in time and thought. It is strange to hear, amid the prophetic dreams of a universal democracy predicted by Rousseau, the wild clanging of that Corybantian war-dance of the Corsicans under Paoli, proclaiming the new era which their heroic struggle began. It is as if they would deafen, with the clangour of their arms, the old despotic gods, while the new divinity is being born upon their island, Jupiter—Napoleon, the revolutionary god of the iron age.
CHAPTER III.
THE MORESCA—ARMED DANCE OF THE CORSICANS.
The Corsicans, like other brave peoples of fiery and imaginative temperament, have a war-dance, called the Moresca. Its origin is matter of dispute—some asserting it to be Moorish and others Greek. The Greeks called these dances of warlike youths, armed with sword and shield, Pyrrhic dances; and ascribed their invention to Minerva, and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. It is uncertain how they spread themselves over the more western countries; but, ever since the struggles of the Christians and Moors, they have been called Moresca; and it appears that they are everywhere practised where the people are rich in traditions of that old gigantic, world-historical contest between Christian and Pagan, Europe and Asia,—as among the Albanians in Greece, among the Servians, the Montenegrins, the Spaniards, and other nations.
I do not know what significance is elsewhere attached to the Moresca, as I have only once, in Genoa, witnessed this magnificent dance; but in Corsica it has all along preserved peculiarities attaching to the period of the Crusades, the Moresca there always representing a conflict between Saracens and Christians; the deliverance of Jerusalem, perhaps, or the conquest of Granada, or the taking of the Corsican cities Aleria and Mariana, by Hugo Count Colonna. The Moresca has thus assumed a half religious, half profane character, and has received from its historical relations a distinctive and national impress.
The Corsicans have at all times produced the spectacle of this dance, particularly in times of popular excitement and struggle, when a national armed sport of this kind was likely of itself to inflame the beholders, while at the same time it reminded them of the great deeds of their forefathers. I know of no nobler pleasure for a free and manly people, than the spectacle of the Moresca, the flower and poetry of the mood that prompts to and exults in fight. It is the only national drama the Corsicans have; as they were without other amusement, they had the heroic deeds of their ancestors represented to them in dance, on the same soil that they had steeped in their blood. It might frequently happen that they rose from the Moresca to rush into battle.
Vescovato, as Filippini mentions, was often the theatre of the Moresca. The people still remember that it was danced there in honour of Sampiero; it was also produced in Vescovato in the time of Paoli. The most recent performance is that of the year 1817.
The representation of the conquest of Mariana, by Hugo Colonna, was that most in favour. A village was supposed to represent the town. The stage was a piece of open ground, the green hills served as amphitheatre, and on their sides lay thousands and thousands, gathered from all parts of the island. Let the reader picture to himself such a public as this—rude, fierce men, all in arms, grouped under the chestnuts, with look, voice, and gesture accompanying the clanging hero-dance. The actors, sometimes two hundred in number, are in two separate troops; all wear the Roman toga. Each dancer holds in his right hand a sword, in his left a dagger; the colour of the plume and the breastplate alone distinguish Moors from Christians. The fiddle-bow of a single violin-player rules the Moresca.
It begins. A Moorish astrologer issues from Mariana dressed in the caftan, and with a long white beard; he looks to the sky and consults the heavenly luminaries, and in dismay he predicts misfortune. With gestures of alarm he hastens back within the gate. And see! yonder comes a Moorish messenger, headlong terror in look and movement, rushing towards Mariana with the news that the Christians have already taken Aleria and Corte, and are marching on Mariana. Just as the messenger vanishes within the city, horns blow, and enter Hugo Colonna with the Christian army. Exulting shouts greet him from the hills.
Hugo, Hugo, Count Colonna,
O how gloriously he dances!
Dances like the kingly tiger
Leaping o'er the desert rocks.
High his sword lifts Count Colonna,
On its hilt the cross he kisses,
Then unto his valiant warriors
Thus he speaks, the Christian knight:
On in storm for Christ and country!
Up the walls of Mariana
Dancing, lead to-day the Moorish
Infidels a dance of death!
Know that all who fall in battle,
For the good cause fighting bravely,
Shall to-day in heaven mingle
With the blessed angel-choirs.
The Christians take their position. Flourish of horns. The Moorish king, Nugalone, and his host issue from Mariana.
Nugalone, O how lightly,
O how gloriously he dances!
Like the tawny spotted panther,
When he dances from his lair.
With his left hand, Nugalone
Curls his moustache, dark and glossy:
Then unto his Paynim warriors
Thus he speaks, the haughty Moor:
Forward! in the name of Allah!
Dance them down, the dogs of Christians!
Show them, as we dance to victory,
Allah is the only God!
Know that all who fall in battle,
Shall to-day in Eden's garden
With the fair immortal maidens
Dance the rapturous houri-dance.
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.
Louder music, sharper, clearer!
Nugalone and Colonna
Onward to the charge are springing,
Onward dance their charging hosts.
Lightly to the ruling music
Youthful limbs are rising, falling,
Swaying, bending, like the flower-stalks,
To the music of the breeze.
Now they meet, now gleam the weapons,
Lightly swung, and lightly parried;
Are they swords, or are they sunbeams—
Sunbeams glittering in their hands?
Tones of viol, bolder, fuller!—
Clash and clang of crossing weapons,
Varied tramp of changing movement,
Backward, forward, fast and slow.
Now they dance in circle wheeling,
Moor and Christian intermingled;—
See, the chain of swords is broken,
And in crescents they retire!
Wilder, wilder, the Moresca—
Furious now the sounding onset,
Like the rush of mad sea-billows,
To the music of the storm.
Quit thee bravely, stout Colonna,
Drive the Paynim crew before thee;
We must win our country's freedom
In the battle-dance to-day.
Thus we'll dance down all our tyrants—
Thus we'll dance thy routed armies
Down the hills of Vescovato,
Heaven-accurséd Genoa!
—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.
"Espada nunca vencida!
Esfuerço de esfuerço estava."—Romanza Durandarte.
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.
"Que todo se passa en flores
Mis amores,
Que todo se passa en flores."—Spanish Song.
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.
"To Jove belong the stranger and the hungry,
And though the gift be small, it cheers the heart."—Odyssey.
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.