THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.
It was about the end of the year 1768. The French had occupied Oletta, a considerable village in the district of Nebbio. As from the nature of its situation it was a post of the highest importance, Paoli put himself in secret communication with the inhabitants, and formed a plan for surprising the French garrison and making them prisoners. They were fifteen hundred in number, and commanded by the Marquis of Arcambal. But the French were upon their guard; they proclaimed martial law in Oletta, and maintained a strict and watchful rule, so that the men of the village did not venture to attempt anything.
Oletta was now still as the grave.
One day a young man named Giulio Saliceti left his village to go into the Campagna, without the permission of the French guard. On his return he was seized and thrown into prison; after a short time, however, he was set at liberty.
The youth left his prison and took his way homewards, full of resentment at the insult put upon him by the enemy. He was noticed to mutter something to himself, probably curses directed against the hated French. A sergeant heard him, and gave him a blow in the face. This occurred in front of the youth's house, at a window of which one of his relatives happened to be standing—the Abbot Saliceti namely, whom the people called Peverino, or Spanish Pepper, from his hot and headlong temper. When Peverino saw the stroke fall upon his kinsman's face, his blood boiled in his veins.
Giulio rushed into the house quite out of himself with shame and anger, and was immediately taken by Peverino into his chamber. After some time the two men were seen to come out, calm, but ominously serious.
At night, other men secretly entered the house of the Saliceti, sat together and deliberated. And what they deliberated on was this: they proposed to blow up the church of Oletta, which the French had turned into their barracks. They were determined to have revenge and their liberty.
They dug a mine from Saliceti's house, terminating beneath the church, and filled it with all the powder they had.
The date fixed for firing the mine was the 13th of February 1769, towards night.
Giulio had nursed his wrath till there was as little pity in his heart as in a musket-bullet. "To-morrow!" he said trembling, "to-morrow! Let me apply the match; they struck me in the face; I will give them a stroke that shall strike them as high as the clouds. I will blast them out of Oletta, as if the bolts of heaven had got among them!
"But the women and children, and those who do not know of it? The explosion will carry away every house in the neighbourhood."
"They must be warned. They must be directed under this or the other pretext to go to the other end of the village at the hour fixed, and that in all quietness."
The conspirators gave orders to this effect.
Next evening, when the dreadful hour arrived, old men and young, women, children, were seen betaking themselves in silence and undefined alarm, with secrecy and speed, to the other end of the village, and there assembling.
The suspicions of the French began to be aroused, and a messenger from General Grand-Maison came galloping in, and communicated in breathless haste the information which his commander had received. Some one had betrayed the plot. That instant the French threw themselves on Saliceti's house and the powder-mine, and crushed the hellish undertaking.
Saliceti and a few of the conspirators cut their way through the enemy with desperate courage, and escaped in safety from Oletta. Others, however, were seized and put in chains. A court-martial condemned fourteen of these to death by the wheel, and seven unfortunates were actually broken, in terms of the sentence.
Seven corpses were exposed to public view, in the square before the Convent of Oletta. No burial was to be allowed them. The French commandant had issued an order that no one should dare to remove any of the bodies from the scaffold for interment, under pain of death.
Blank dismay fell upon the village of Oletta. Every heart was chilled with horror. Not a human being stirred abroad; the fires upon the hearths were extinguished—no voice was heard but the voice of weeping. The people remained in their houses, but their thoughts turned continually to the square before the convent, where the seven corpses lay upon the scaffold.
The first night came. Maria Gentili Montalti was sitting on her bed in her chamber. She was not weeping; she sat with her head hanging on her breast, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Sometimes a profound sob shook her frame. It seemed to her as if a voice called, through the stillness of the night, O Marì!
The dead, many a time in the stillness of the night, call the name of those whom they have loved. Whoever answers, must die.
O Bernardo! cried Maria—for she wished to die.
Bernardo lay before the convent on the scaffold; he was the seventh and youngest of the dead. He was Maria's lover, and their marriage was fixed for the following month. Now he lay dead upon the scaffold.
Maria Gentili stood silent in the dark chamber, she listened towards the side where the convent lay, and her soul held converse with a spirit. Bernardo seemed to implore of her a Christian burial.
But whoever removed a corpse from the scaffold and buried it, was to be punished by death. Maria was resolved to bury her beloved and then die.
She softly opened the door of her chamber in order to leave the house. She passed through the room in which her aged parents slept. She went to their bedside and listened to their breathing. Then her heart began to quail, for she was the only child of her parents, and their sole support, and when she thought how her death by the hand of the public executioner would bow her father and mother down into the grave, her soul shrank back in great pain, and she turned, and made a step towards her chamber.
At that moment she again heard the voice of her dead lover wail: O Marì! O Marì! I loved thee so well, and now thou forsakest me. In my mangled body lies the heart that died still loving thee—bury me in the Church of St. Francis, in the grave of my fathers, O Marì!
Maria opened the door of the house and passed out into the night. With uncertain footsteps she gained the square of the convent. The night was gloomy. Sometimes the storm came and swept the clouds away, so that the moon shone down. When its beams fell upon the convent, it was as if the light of heaven refused to look upon what it there saw, and the moon wrapped itself again in the black veil of clouds. For before the convent a row of seven corpses lay on the red scaffold, and the seventh was the corpse of a youth.
The owl and the raven screamed upon the tower; they sang the vocero—the dirge for the dead. A grenadier was walking up and down, with his musket on his shoulder, not far off. No wonder that he shuddered to his inmost marrow, and buried his face in his mantle, as he moved slowly up and down.
Maria had wrapped herself in the black faldetta, that her form might be the less distinct in the darkness of the night. She breathed a prayer to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of Sorrows, that she would help her, and then she walked swiftly to the scaffold. It was the seventh body—she loosed Bernardo; her heart, and a faint gleam from his dead face, told her that it was he, even in the dark night. Maria took the dead man in her arms, upon her shoulder. She had become strong, as if with the strength of a man. She bore the corpse into the Church of St. Francis.
There she sat down exhausted, on the steps of an altar, over which the lamp of the Mother of God was burning. The dead Bernardo lay upon her knees, as the dead Christ once lay upon the knees of Mary. In the south they call this group Pietà.
Not a sound in the church. The lamp glimmers above the altar. Outside, a gust of wind that whistles by.
Maria rose. She let the dead Bernardo gently down upon the steps of the altar. She went to the spot where the grave of Bernardo's parents lay. She opened the grave. Then she took up the dead body. She kissed him, and lowered him into the grave, and again shut it. Maria knelt long before the Mother of God, and prayed that Bernardo's soul might have peace in heaven; and then she went silently away to her house, and to her chamber.
When morning broke, Bernardo's corpse was missing from among the dead bodies before the convent. The news flew through the village, and the soldiers drummed alarm. It was not doubted that the Leccia family had removed their kinsman during the night from the scaffold; and instantly their house was forced, its inmates taken prisoners, and thrown chained into a jail. Guilty of capital crime, according to the law that had been proclaimed, they were to suffer the penalty, although they denied the deed.
Maria Gentili heard in her chamber what had happened. Without saying a word, she hastened to the house of the Count de Vaux, who had come to Oletta. She threw herself at his feet, and begged the liberation of the prisoners. She confessed that it was she who had done that of which they were supposed to be guilty. "I have buried my betrothed," said she; "death is my due, here is my head; but restore their freedom to those that suffer innocently."
The Count at first refused to believe what he heard; for he held it impossible both that a weak girl should be capable of such heroism, and that she should have sufficient strength to accomplish what Maria had accomplished. When he had convinced himself of the truth of her assertions, a thrill of astonishment passed through him, and he was moved to tears. "Go," said he, "generous-hearted girl, yourself release the relations of your lover; and may God reward your heroism!"
On the same day the other six corpses were taken from the scaffold, and received a Christian burial.
CHAPTER VII.
A RIDE THROUGH THE DISTRICT OF OREZZA TO MOROSAGLIA.
I wished to go from Oreto to Morosaglia, Paoli's native place, through Orezza. Marcantonio had promised to accompany me, and to provide good horses. He accordingly awoke me early in the morning, and made ready to go. He had put on his best clothes, wore a velvet jacket, and had shaved himself very smoothly. The women fortified us for the journey with a good breakfast, and we mounted our little Corsican horses, and rode proudly forth.
It makes my heart glad yet to think of that Sunday morning, and the ride through this romantic and beautiful land of Orezza—over the green hills, through cool dells, over gushing brooks, through the green oak-woods. Far as the eye can reach on every side, those shady, fragrant chestnut-groves; those giants of trees, in size such as I had never seen before. Nature has here done everything, man so little. His chestnuts are often a Corsican's entire estate; and in many instances he has only six goats and six chestnut-trees, which yield him his polleta. Government has already entertained the idea of cutting down the forests of chestnuts, in order to compel the Corsican to till the ground; but this would amount to starving him. Many of these trees have trunks twelve feet in thickness. With their full, fragrant foliage, long, broad, dark leaves, and fibred, light-green fruit-husks, they are a sight most grateful to the eye.
Beyond the paese of Casalta, we entered a singularly romantic dell, through which the Fiumalto rushes. You find everywhere here serpentine, and the exquisite marble called Verde Antico. The engineers called the little district of Orezza the elysium of geology; the waters of the stream roll the beautiful stones along with them. Through endless balsamic groves, up hill and down hill, we rode onwards to Piedicroce, the principal town of Orezza, celebrated for its medicinal springs; for Orezza, rich in minerals, is also rich in mineral waters.
Francesco Marmocchi says, in his geography of the island: "Mineral springs are the invariable characteristic of countries which have been upheaved by the interior forces. Corsica, which within a limited space presents the astonishing and varied spectacle of the thousandfold workings of this ancient struggle between the heated interior of the earth and its cooled crust, was not likely to form an exception to this general rule."
Corsica has, accordingly, its cold and its warm mineral springs; and although these, so far as they have been counted, are numerous, there can be no doubt that others still remain undiscovered.
The natural phenomena of this beautiful island, and particularly its mineralogy, have by no means as yet had sufficient attention directed to them.
Up to the present time, fourteen mineral springs, warm and cold, are accurately and fully known. The distribution of these salubrious waters over the surface of the island, more especially in respect to their temperature, is extremely unequal. The region of the primary granite possesses eight, all warm, and containing more or less sulphur, except one; while the primary ophiolitic and calcareous regions possess only six, one alone of which is warm.
The springs of Orezza, bursting forth at many spots, lie on the right bank of the Fiumalto. The main spring is the only one that is used; it is cold, acid, and contains iron. It gushes out of a hill below Piedicroce in great abundance, from a stone basin. No measures have been taken for the convenience of strangers visiting the wells; these walk or ride under their broad parasols down the hills into the green forest, where they have planted their tents. After a ride of several hours under the burning sun, and not under a parasol, I found this vehemently effervescing water most delicious.
Piedicroce lies high. Its slender church-tower looks airily down from the green hill. The Corsican churches among the mountains frequently occupy enchantingly beautiful and bold sites. Properly speaking, they stand already in the heavens; and when the door opens, the clouds and the angels might walk in along with the congregation.
A majestic thunderstorm was flaming round Piedicroce, and echoed powerfully from hill to hill. We rode into the paese to escape the torrents of rain. A young man, fashionably dressed, sprang out of a house, and invited us to enter his locanda. I found other two gentlemen within, with daintily-trimmed beard and moustache, and of very active but polished manners. They immediately wished to know my commands; and nimble they were in executing them—one whipped eggs, another brought wood and fire, the third minced meat. The eldest of them had a nobly chiselled but excessively pale face, with a long Slavonic moustache. So many cooks to a simple meal, and such extremely genteel ones, I was now for the first time honoured with. I was utterly amazed till they told me who they were. They were two fugitive Modenese, and a Hungarian. The Magyar told me, as he stewed the meat, that he had been seven years lieutenant-general. "Now I stand here and cook," he added; "but such is the way of the world, when one has come to be a poor devil in a foreign country, he must not stand on ceremony. We have set up a locanda here for the season at the wells, and have made very little by it."
As I looked at his pale face—he had caught fever at Aleria—I felt touched.
We sat down together, Magyar, Lombard, Corsican, and German, and talked of old times, and named many names of modern celebrity or notoriety. How silent many of these become before the one great name, Paoli! I dare not mention them beside him; the noble citizen, the man of intellect and action, will not endure their company.
The storm was nearly over, but the mountains still stood plunged in mist. We mounted our horses in order to cross the hills of San Pietro and reach Ampugnani. Thunder growled and rolled among the misty summits, and clouds hung on every side. A wild and dreary sadness lay heavily on the hills; now and then still a flash of lightning; mountains as if sunk in a sea of cloud, others stretching themselves upwards like giants; wherever the veil rends, a rich landscape, green groves, black villages—all this, as it seemed, flying past the rider; valley and summit, cloister and tower, hill after hill, like dream-pictures hanging among clouds. The wild elemental powers, that sleep fettered in the soul of man, are ready at such moments to burst their bonds, and rush madly forth. Who has not experienced this mood on a wild sea, or when wandering through the storm? and what we are then conscious of is the same elemental power of nature that men call passion, when it takes a determinate form. Forward, Antonio! Gallop the little red horses along this misty hill, fast! faster! till clouds, hills, cloisters, towers, fly with horse and rider. Hark! yonder hangs a black church-tower, high up among the mists, and the bells peal and peal Ave Maria—signal for the soul to calm itself.
The villages are here small, picturesquely scattered everywhere among the hills, lying high or in beautiful green valleys. I counted from one point so many as seventeen, with as many slender black church-towers. We passed numbers of people on the road; men of the old historic land of Orezza and Rostino, noble and powerful forms; their fathers once formed the guard of Paoli.
At Polveroso, we had a magnificent glimpse of a deep valley, in the middle of which lies Porta, the principal town of the little district of Ampugnani, embosomed in chestnuts, now dripping with the thunder-shower. Here stood formerly the ancient Accia, a bishopric, not a trace of which remains. Porta is an unusually handsome place, and many of its little houses resemble elegant villas. The small yellow church has a pretty façade, and a surprisingly graceful tower stands, in Tuscan fashion, as isolated campanile or belfry by its side. From the hill of San Pietro, you look down into the rows of houses, and the narrow streets that group themselves about the church, as into a trim little theatre. Porta is the birthplace of Sebastiani.
The mountains now become balder, and more severe in form, losing the chestnuts that previously adorned them. I found huge thistles growing by the roadside, large almost as trees, with magnificent, broad, finely-cut leaves, and hard woody stem. Marcantonio had sunk into complete silence. The Corsicans speak little, like the Spartans; my host of Oreto was dumb as Harpocrates. I had ridden with him a whole day through the mountains, and, from morning till evening had never been able to draw him into conversation. Only now and then he threw out some naïve question: "Have you cannons? Have you hells in your country? Do fruits grow with you? Are you wealthy?"
After Ave Maria, we at length reached the canton of Rostino or Morosaglia, the country of Paoli, the most illustrious of all the localities celebrated in Corsican history, and the central point of the old democratic Terra del Commune. We were still upon the Campagna, when Marcantonio took leave of me; he was going to pass the night in a house at some distance, and return home with the horses on the morrow. He gave me a brotherly kiss, and turned away grave and silent; and I, happy to find myself in this land of heroes and free men, wandered on alone towards the convent of Morosaglia. I have still an hour on the solitary plain, and, before entering Paoli's house, I shall continue the history of his people and himself at the point where I left off.
CHAPTER VIII.
PASQUALE PAOLI.
"Il cittadin non la città son io."—Alfieri's Timoleon.
After Pasquale Paoli and his brother Clemens, with their companions, had left Corsica, the French easily made themselves masters of the whole island. Only a few straggling guerilla bands protracted the struggle a while longer among the mountains. Among these, one noble patriot especially deserves the love and admiration of future times—the poor parish priest of Guagno—Domenico Leca, of the old family of Giampolo. He had sworn upon the Gospels to abide true to freedom, and to die sooner than give up the struggle. When the whole country had submitted, and the enemy summoned him to lay down his arms, he declared that he could not violate his oath. He dismissed those of his people that did not wish any longer to follow him, and threw himself, with a faithful few, into the hills. For months he continued the struggle, fighting, however, only when he was attacked, and tending wounded foes with Christian compassion when they fell into his hands. He inflicted injury on none except in honourable conflict. In vain the French called on him to come down, and live unmolested in his village. The priest of Guagno wandered among the mountains, for he was resolved to be free; and when all had forsaken him, the goat-herds gave him shelter and sustenance. But one day he was found dead in a cave, whence he had gone home to his Master, weary and careworn, and a free man. A relative of Paoli and friend of Alfieri—Giuseppe Ottaviano Savelli—has celebrated the memory of the priest of Guagno in a Latin poem, with the title of Vir Nemoris—The Man of the Forest.
Other Corsicans, too, who had gone into exile to Italy, landed here and there, and attempted, like their forefathers, Vincentello, Renuccio, Giampolo, and Sampiero, to free the island. None of these attempts met with any success. Many Corsicans were barbarously dragged off to prison—many sent to the galleys at Toulon, as if they had been helots who had revolted against their masters. Abattucci, who had been one of the last to lay down arms, falsely accused of high treason and convicted, was condemned in Bastia to branding and the galleys. When Abattucci was sitting upon the scaffold ready to endure the execution of the sentence, the executioner shrank from applying the red-hot iron. "Do your duty," cried a French judge; the man turned round to the latter, and stretched the iron towards him, as if about to brand the judge. Some time after, Abattucci was pardoned.
Meanwhile, Count Marbœuf had succeeded the Count de Vaux in the command of Corsica. His government was on the whole mild and beneficial; the ancient civic regulations of the Corsicans, and their statutes, remained in force; the Council of Twelve was restored, and the administration of justice rendered more efficient. Efforts were also made to animate agriculture, and the general industry of the now utterly impoverished country. Marbœuf died in Bastia in 1786, after governing Corsica for sixteen years.
When the French Revolution broke out, that mighty movement absorbed all private interests of the Corsicans, and these ardent lovers of liberty threw themselves with enthusiasm into the current of the new time. The Corsican deputy, Saliceti, proposed that the island should be incorporated with France, in order that it might share in her constitution. This took place, in terms of a decree of the Legislative Assembly, on the 30th of November 1789, and excited universal exultation throughout Corsica. Most singular and contradictory was the turn affairs had taken. The same France, that twenty years before had sent out her armies to annihilate the liberties and the constitution of Corsica, now raised that constitution upon her throne!
The Revolution recalled Paoli from his exile. He had gone first to Tuscany, and thereafter to London, where the court and ministers had given him an honourable reception. He lived very retired in London, and little was heard of his life or his employment. Paoli made no stir when he came to England; the great man who had led the van for Europe on her new career, withdrew into silence and obscurity in his little house in Oxford Street. He made no magniloquent speeches. All he could do was to act like a man, and, when that was no longer permitted him, be proudly silent. The scholar of Corte had said in his presence, in the oration from which I have quoted: "If freedom were to be gained by mere talking, then were the whole world free." Something might be learned from the wisdom of this young student. When Napoleon, like a genuine Corsican, taking refuge as a last resource in an appeal to hospitality, claimed that of England from on board the Bellerophon, he compared himself to Themistocles when in the position of a suppliant for protection. He was not entitled to compare himself with the great citizen of Greece; Pasquale Paoli alone was that exiled Themistocles!
Here are one or two letters of this period:—
PAOLI TO HIS BROTHER CLEMENS,
(Who had remained in Tuscany.)
"London, Oct. 3, 1769.—I have received no letters from you. I fear they have been intercepted, for our enemies are very adroit at such things.... I was well received by the king and queen. The ministers have called upon me. This reception has displeased certain foreign ministers: I hear they have lodged protests. I have promised to go on Sunday into the country to visit the Duke of Gloucester, who is our warm friend. I hope to obtain something here for the support of our exiled fellow-countrymen, if Vienna does nothing. The eyes of people here are beginning to be opened; they acknowledge the importance of Corsica. The king has spoken to me very earnestly of the affair; his kindness to me personally made me feel embarrassed. My reception at court has almost drawn upon me the displeasure of the opposition; so that some of them have begun to lampoon me. Our enemies sought to encourage them, letting it be understood with a mysterious air, that I had sold our country; that I had bought an estate in Switzerland with French gold, that our property had not been touched by the French; and that they had an understanding with these ministers, as they too are sold to France. But I believe that all are now better informed; and every one approved of my resolution not to mix myself up with the designs of parties; but to further by all means that for which it is my duty to labour, and for the advancement of which all can unite, without compromising their individual relations.
"Send me an accurate list of all our friends who have gone into banishment—we must not be afraid of expense; and send me news of Corsica. The letters must come under the addresses of private friends, otherwise they do not reach me. I enjoy perfect health. This climate appears to me as yet very mild.
"The Campagna is always quite green. He who has not seen it can have no conception of the loveliness of spring. The soil of England is crisped like the waves of the sea when the wind moves them lightly. Men here, though excited by political faction, live, as far as regards overt acts of violence, as if they were the most intimate friends: they are benevolent, sensible, generous in all things; and they are happy under a constitution than which there can be no better. This city is a world; and it is without doubt a finer town than all the rest put together. Fleets seem to enter its river every moment; I believe that Rome was neither greater nor richer. What we in Corsica reckon in paoli, people here reckon in guineas, that is, in louis-d'ors. I have written for a bill of exchange; I have refused to hear of contributions intended for me personally, till I know what conclusion they have come to in regard to the others; but I know that their intentions are good. In case they are obliged to temporize, finding their hands tied at present, they will be ready the first war that breaks out. I greet all; live happy, and do not think on me."
CATHERINE OF RUSSIA TO PASQUALE PAOLI.
"St. Petersburg, April 27, 1770.
"Monsieur General de Paoli!—I have received your letter from London, of the 15th February. All that Count Alexis Orloff has let you know of my good intentions towards you, Monsieur, is a result of the feelings with which your magnanimity, and the high-spirited and noble manner in which you have defended your country, have inspired me. I am acquainted with the details of your residence in Pisa, and with this among the rest, that you gained the esteem of all those who had opportunities of intercourse with you. That is the reward of virtue, in whatever situation it may find itself; be assured that I shall always entertain the liveliest sympathy for yours.
"The motive of your journey to England, was a natural consequence of your sentiments with regard to your country. Nothing is wanting to your good cause but favourable circumstances. The natural interests of our empire, connected as they are with those of Great Britain; the mutual friendship between the two nations which results from this; the reception which my fleets have met with on the same account, and which my ships in the Mediterranean, and the commerce of Russia, would have to expect from a free people in friendly relations with my own, supply motives which cannot but be favourable to you. You may, therefore, be assured, Monsieur, that I shall not let slip the opportunities which will probably occur, of rendering you all the good services that political conjunctures may allow.
"The Turks have declared against me the most unjust war that perhaps ever has been declared. At the present moment I am only able to defend myself. The blessing of Heaven, which has hitherto accompanied my cause, and which I pray God to continue to me, shows sufficiently that justice cannot be long suppressed, and that patience, hope, and courage, though the world is full of the most difficult situations, nevertheless attain their aim. I receive with pleasure, Monsieur, the assurances of regard which you are pleased to express, and I beg you will be convinced of the esteem with which I am,
"Catherine."
Paoli had lived twenty long years an exile in London, when he was summoned back to his native country. The Corsicans sent him a deputation, and the French National Assembly, in a pompous address, invited him to return.
On the 3d of April 1790, Paoli came for the first time to Paris. He was fêted here as the Washington of Europe, and Lafayette was constantly at his side. The National Assembly received him with stormy acclamations, and elaborate oratory. His reply was as follows:—
"Messieurs, this is the fairest and happiest day of my life. I have spent my years in striving after liberty, and I find here its noblest spectacle. I left my country in slavery, I find it now in freedom. What more remains for me to desire? After an absence of twenty years, I know not what alterations tyranny may have produced among my countrymen; ah! it cannot have been otherwise than fatal, for oppression demoralizes. But in removing, as you have done, the chains from the Corsicans, you have restored to them their ancient virtue. Now that I am returning to my native country, you need entertain no doubts as to the nature of my sentiments. You have been magnanimous towards me, and I was never a slave. My past conduct, which you have honoured with your approval, is the pledge of my future course of action: my whole life, I may say, has been an unbroken oath to liberty; it seems, therefore, as if I had already sworn allegiance to the constitution which you have established; but it still remains for me to give my oath to the nation which adopts me, and to the monarch whom I now acknowledge. This is the favour which I desire of the august Assembly."
In the club of the Friends of the Constitution, Robespierre thus addressed Paoli: "Ah! there was a time when we sought to crush freedom in its last retreats. Yet no! that was the crime of despotism—the French people have wiped away the stain. What ample atonement to conquered Corsica, and injured mankind! Noble citizens, you defended liberty at a time when I did not so much as venture to hope for it. You have suffered for liberty; you now triumph with it, and your triumph is ours. Let us unite to preserve it for ever, and may its base opponents turn pale with fear at the sight of our sacred league."
Paoli had no foreboding of the position into which the course of events was yet to bring him, in relation to this same France, or that he was once more to stand opposed to her as a foe. He left for Corsica. In Marseilles he was again received by a Corsican deputation, with the members of which came the two young club-leaders of Ajaccio—Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte. Paoli wept as he landed on Cape Corso and kissed the soil of his native country; he was conducted in triumph from canton to canton; and the Te Deum was sung throughout the island.
Paoli, as President of the Assembly, and Lieutenant-general of the Corsican National Guard, now devoted himself entirely to the affairs of his country; in the year 1791 he also undertook the command of the Division, and of the island. Although the French Revolution had silenced the special interests of the Corsicans, they began again to demand attention, and this was particularly felt by Paoli, among whose virtues patriotism was always uppermost. Paoli could never transform himself into a Frenchman, or forget that his people had possessed independence, and its own constitution. A coolness sprang up between him and certain parties in the island; the aristocratic French party, namely, on the one hand, composed of such men as Gaffori, Rossi, Peretti, and Buttafuoco; and the extreme democrats on the other, who saw the welfare of the world nowhere but in the whirl of the French Revolution, such as the Bonapartes, Saliceti, and Arenas.
The execution of the king, and the wild and extravagant procedure of the popular leaders in Paris, shocked the philanthropic Paoli. He gradually broke with France, and the rupture became manifest after the unsuccessful French expedition from Corsica against Sardinia, the failure of which was attributed to Paoli. His opponents had lodged a formal accusation against him and Pozzo di Borgo, the Procurator-general, libelling them as Particularists, who wished to separate the island from France.
The Convention summoned him to appear before its bar and answer the accusations, and sent Saliceti, Lacombe, and Delcher, as commissaries to the island. Paoli, however, refused to obey the decree, and sent a dignified and firm address to the Convention, in which he repelled the imputations made upon him, and complained of their forcing a judicial investigation upon an aged man, and a martyr for freedom. Was a Paoli to stand in a court composed of windy declaimers and play-actors, and then lay his head, grown gray in heroism, beneath the knife of the guillotine? Was this to be the end of a life that had produced such noble fruits?
The result of this refusal to obey the orders of the Convention, was the complete revolt of Paoli and the Paolists from France. The patriots prepared for a struggle, and published such enactments as plainly intimated that they wished Corsica to be considered as separated from France. The commissaries hastened home to Paris; and after receiving their report, the Convention declared Paoli guilty of high treason, and placed him beyond the protection of the law. The island was split into two hostile camps, the patriots and the republicans, and already fighting had commenced.
Meanwhile Paoli had formed the plan of placing the island under the protection of the English Government. No course lay nearer or was more natural than this. He had already entered into communication with Admiral Hood, who commanded the English fleet before Toulon, and now with his ships appeared on the Corsican coast. He landed near Fiorenzo on the 2d of February. This fortress fell after a severe bombardment; and the commandant of Bastia, General Antonio Gentili, capitulated. Calvi alone, which had withstood in previous centuries so many assaults, still held out, though the English bombs made frightful havoc in the little town, and all but reduced it to a heap of ruins. At length, on the 20th of July 1794, the fortress surrendered; the commandant, Casabianca, capitulated, and embarked with his troops for France. As Bonifazio and Ajaccio were already in the hands of the Paolists, the Republicans could no longer maintain a footing on the island. They emigrated, and Paoli and the English remained undisputed masters of Corsica.
A general assembly now declared the island completely severed from France, and placed it under the protection of England. England, however, did not content herself with a mere right of protection—she claimed the sovereignty of Corsica; and this became the occasion of a rupture between Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo, whom Sir Gilbert Elliot had won for the English side. On the 10th of June 1794, the Corsicans declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain; that it was, however, to remain independent, and be governed by a viceroy according to its own constitution.
Paoli had counted on the English king's naming him viceroy; but he was deceived, for Gilbert Elliot was sent to Corsica in this capacity—a serious blunder, since Elliot was totally unacquainted with the condition of the island, and his appointment could not but deeply wound Paoli.
The gray-haired man immediately withdrew into private life; and as Elliot saw that his relation to the English, already unpleasant, must soon become dangerous, he wrote to George III. that the removal of Pasquale was desirable. This was accomplished. The King of England, in a friendly letter, invited Paoli to come to London, and spend his remaining days in honour at the court. Paoli was in his own house at Morosaglia when he received the letter. Sadly he now proceeded to San Fiorenzo, where he embarked, and left his country for the third and last time, in October 1795. The great man shared the same fate as most of the legislators and popular leaders of antiquity; he died rewarded with ingratitude, unhappy, and in exile. The two greatest men of Corsica, Pasquale and Napoleon, foes to each other, were both to end their days and be buried on British territory.
The English government of Corsica—from ignorance of the country very badly conducted—lasted only a short time. As soon as Napoleon found himself victorious in Italy, he despatched Generals Gentili and Casalta with troops to the island; and scarcely had they made their appearance, when the Corsicans, imbittered by the banishment of Paoli and their other grievances, rose against the English. In almost inexplicable haste they relinquished the island, from whose people they were separated by wide and ineradicable differences in national character; and by November 1796, not a single Englishman remained in Corsica. The island was now again under the supremacy of France.
Pasquale Paoli lived to see Napoleon Emperor. Fate granted him at least the satisfaction of seeing a countryman of his own the most prominent and the most powerful actor in European history. After passing twelve years more of exile in London, he died peacefully on the 5th of February 1807, at the age of eighty-two, his mind to the last occupied with thoughts of the people whom he had so warmly loved. He was the patriarch and oldest legislator of European liberty. In his last letter to his friend Padovani, the noble old man, reviewing his life, says humbly:—
"I have lived long enough; and if it were granted me to begin my life anew, I should reject the gift, unless it were accompanied with the intelligent cognisance of my past life, that I might repair the errors and follies by which it has been marked."
One of the Corsican exiles announced his death to his countrymen in the following letter:—
GIACOMORSI TO SIGNOR PADOVANI.
"London, July 2, 1807.
"It is, alas! true that the newspapers were correctly informed when they published the death of the poor General. He fell ill on Monday the 2d of February, about half-past eight in the evening, and at half-past eleven on the night of Thursday he died in my arms. He leaves to the University at Corte salaries of fifty pounds a year each, for four professors; and another mastership for the School of Rostino, which is to be founded in Morosaglia.
"On the 13th of February, he was buried in St. Pancras, where almost all Catholics are interred. His funeral will have cost nearly five hundred pounds. About the middle of last April, I and Dr. Barnabi went to Westminster Abbey to find a spot where we shall erect a monument to him with his bust.
"Paoli said when dying:—My nephews have little to hope for; but I shall bequeath to them, for their consolation, and as something to remember me by, this saying from the Bible—'I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"
CHAPTER IX.
PAOLI'S BIRTHPLACE.
It was late when I reached Rostino, or Morosaglia. Under this name is understood, not a single paese, but a number of villages scattered among the rude, stern hills. I found my way with difficulty through these little neighbour hamlets to the convent of Morosaglia, climbing rough paths over rocks, and again descending under gigantic chestnuts. A locanda stands opposite the convent, a rare phenomenon in the country districts of Corsica. I found there a lively and intelligent young man, who informed me he was director of the Paoli School, and promised me his assistance for the following day.
In the morning, I went to the little village of Stretta, where the three Paolis were born. One must see this Casa Paoli in order rightly to comprehend the history of the Corsicans, and award a just admiration to these singular men. The house is a very wretched, black, village-cabin, standing on a granite rock; a brooklet runs immediately past the door; it is a rude structure of stone, with narrow apertures in the walls, such as are seen in towers; the windows few, unsymmetrically disposed, unglazed, with wooden shutters, as in the time of Pasquale. When the Corsicans had elected him their general, and he was expected home from Naples, Clemens had glass put in the windows of the sitting-room, in order to make the parental abode somewhat more comfortable for his brother. But Paoli had no sooner entered and remarked the luxurious alteration, than he broke every pane with his stick, saying that he did not mean to live in his father's house like a Duke, but like a born Corsican. The windows still remain without glass; the eye overlooks from them the magnificent panorama of the mountains of Niolo, as far as the towering Monte Rotondo.
A relative of Paoli's—a simple country girl of the Tommasi family—took me into the house. Everything in it wears the stamp of humble peasant life. You mount a steep wooden stair to the mean rooms, in which Paoli's wooden table and wooden seat still stand. With joy, I saw myself in the little chamber in which Pasquale was born; my emotions on this spot were more lively and more agreeable than in the birth-chamber of Napoleon.
Once more that fine face, with its classic, grave, and dignified features, rose before me, and along with it the forms of a noble father and a heroic brother. In this little room Pasquale came to the world in April of the year 1724. His mother was Dionisia Valentina, an excellent woman from a village near Ponte Nuovo—the spot so fatal to her son. His father, Hyacinth, we know already. He had been a physician, and became general of the Corsicans along with Ceccaldi and Giafferi. He was distinguished by exalted virtues, and was worthy of the renown that attaches to his name as the father of two such sons. Hyacinth had great oratorical powers, and some reputation as a poet. Amid the din of arms those powerful spirits had still time and genial force enough to rise free above the actual circumstances of their condition, and sing war-hymns, like Tyrtæus.
Here is a sonnet addressed by Hyacinth to the brave Giafferi, after the battle of Borgo:—
"To crown unconquer'd Cyrnus' hero-son,
See death descend, and destiny bend low;
Vanquish'd Ligurians, by their sighs of wo,
Swelling fame's trumpet with a louder tone.
Scarce was the passage of the Golo won,
Than in their fort of strength he storm'd the foe.
Perils, superior numbers scorning so,
Vict'ry still follow'd where his arms had shone.
Chosen by Cyrnus, fate the choice approved,
Trusting the mighty conflict to his sword,
Which Europe rose to watch, and watching stands.
By that sword's flash, e'en fate itself is moved;
Thankless Liguria has its stroke deplored,
While Cyrnus takes her sceptre from his hands."
Such men are as if moulded of Greek bronze. They are the men of Plutarch, and resemble Aristides, Epaminondas, and Timoleon. They could resign themselves to privation, and sacrifice their interests and their lives; they were simple, sincere, stout-hearted citizens of their country. They had become great by facts, not by theories, and the high nobility of their principles had a basis, positive and real, in their actions and experiences. If we are to express the entire nature of these men in one word, that word is Virtue, and they were worthy of virtue's fairest reward—Freedom.
My glance falls upon the portrait of Pasquale. I could not wish to imagine him otherwise. His head is large and regular; his brow arched and high, the hair long and flowing; his eyebrows bushy, falling a little down into the eyes, as if swift to contract and frown; but the blue eyes are luminous, large, and free—full of clear, perceptive intellect; and an air of gentleness, dignity, and benevolence, pervades the beardless, open countenance.
One of my greatest pleasures is to look at portraits and busts of great men. Four periods of these attract and reward our examination most—the heads of Greece; the Roman heads; the heads of the great fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and the heads of the eighteenth century. It would be an almost endless labour to arrange by themselves the busts of the great men of the eighteenth century; but such a Museum would richly reward the trouble. When I see a certain group of these together, it seems to me as if I recognised a family resemblance prevailing in it—a resemblance arising from the presence in each, of one and the same spiritual principle—Pasquale, Washington, Franklin, Vico, Genovesi, Filangieri, Herder, Pestalozzi, Lessing.
Pasquale's head is strikingly like that of Alfieri. Although the latter, like Byron, aristocratic, proud, and unbendingly egotistic, widely differs in many respects from his contemporary, Pasquale—the peaceful, philanthrophic citizen; he had nevertheless a soul full of a marvellous energy, and burning with the hatred of tyranny. He could understand such a nature as Paoli's better than Frederick the Great. Frederick once sent to this house a present for Paoli—a sword bearing the inscription, Libertas, Patria. Away in distant Prussia, the great king took Pasquale for an unusually able soldier. He was no soldier; his brother Clemens was his sword; he was the thinking head—a citizen and a strong and high-hearted man. Alfieri comprehended him better, he dedicated his Timoleon to him, and sent him the poem with this letter:—
TO SIGNOR PASQUALE PAOLI, THE NOBLE DEFENDER OF CORSICA.
"To write tragedies on the subject of liberty, in the language of a country which does not possess liberty, will perhaps, with justice, appear mere folly to those who look no further than the present. But he who draws conclusions for the future from the constant vicissitudes of the past, cannot pronounce such a rash judgment. I therefore dedicate this my tragedy to you, as one of the enlightened few—one who, because he can form the most correct idea of other times, other nations, and high principles—is also worthy to have been born and to have been active in a less effeminate century than ours. Although it has not been permitted you to give your country its freedom, I do not, as the mob is wont to do, judge of men according to their success, but according to their actions, and hold you entirely worthy to listen to the sentiments of Timoleon, as sentiments which you are thoroughly able to understand, and with which you can sympathize.
Vittoria Alfieri."
Alfieri inscribed on the copy of his tragedy which he sent to Pasquale, the following verses:—
"To Paoli, the noble Corsican
Who made himself the teacher and the friend
Of the young France.
Thou with the sword hast tried, I with the pen,
In vain to rouse our Italy from slumber.
Now read; perchance my hand interprets rightly
The meaning of thy heart."
Alfieri exhibited much delicacy of perception in dedicating the Timoleon to Paoli—the tragedy of a republican, who had once, in the neighbouring Sicily, given wise democratic laws to a liberated people, and then died as a private citizen. Plutarch was a favourite author with Paoli, as with most of the great men of the eighteenth century, and Epaminondas was his favourite hero; the two were kindred natures—both despised pomp and expensive living, and did not imagine that their patriotic services and endeavours were incompatible with the outward style of citizens and commoners. Pasquale was fond of reading: he had a choice library, and his memory was retentive. An old man told me that once, when as a boy he was walking along the road with a school-fellow, and reciting a passage from Virgil, Paoli accidentally came up behind him, slapped him on the shoulder, and proceeded himself with the passage.
Many particulars of Paoli's habits are still remembered by the people here. The old men have seen him walking about under these chestnuts, in a long green, gold-laced coat,[N] and a vest of brown Corsican cloth. When he showed himself, he was always surrounded by his peasantry, whom he treated as equals. He was accessible to all, and he maintained a lively recollection of an occasion when he had deeply to repent his having shut himself up for an hour. It was one day during the last struggle for independence; he was in Sollacaro, embarrassed with an accumulation of business, and had ordered the sentry to allow no one admission. After some time a woman appeared, accompanied by an armed youth. The woman was in mourning, wrapped in the faldetta, and wore round her neck a black ribbon, to which a Moor's head, in silver—the Corsican arms—was attached. She attempted to enter—the sentry repelled her. Paoli, hearing a noise, opened the door, and demanded hastily and imperiously what she wanted. The woman said with mournful calmness: "Signor, be so good as listen to me. I was the mother of two sons; the one fell at the Tower of Girolata; the other stands here. I come to give him to his country, that he may supply the place of his dead brother." She turned to the youth, and said to him: "My son, do not forget that you are more your country's child than mine." The woman went away. Paoli stood a moment as if thunderstruck; then he sprang after her, embraced with emotion mother and son, and introduced them to his officers. Paoli said afterwards that he never felt so embarrassed as before that noble-hearted woman.
He never married; his people were his family. His only niece, the daughter of his brother Clemens, was married to a Corsican called Barbaggi. But Paoli himself, capable of all the virtues of friendship, was not without a noble female friend, a woman of talent and glowing patriotism, to whom the greatest men of the country confided their political ideas and plans. This Corsican Roland, however, kept no salon; she was a nun, of the noble house of Rivarola. A single circumstance evinces the ardent sympathy of this nun for the patriotic struggles of her countrymen; after Achille Murati's bold conquest of Capraja, she herself, in her exultation at the success of the enterprise, went over to the island, as if to take possession of it in the name of Paoli. Many of Pasquale's letters are addressed to the Signora Monaca, and are altogether occupied with politics, as if they had been written to a man.
The incredible activity of Paoli appears from his collected letters. The talented Italian Tommaseo (at present living in exile in Corfu) has published a large volume containing the most important of these. They are highly interesting, and exhibit a manly, vigorous, and clear intellect. Paoli disliked writing—he dictated, like Napoleon; he could not sit long, his continually active mind allowed him no rest. It is said of him that he never knew the date; that he could read the future, and that he frequently had visions.
Paoli's memory is very sacred with his people. Napoleon elates the soul of the Corsican with pride, because he was his brother; but when you name the name of Paoli, his eye brightens like that of a son, at the mention of a noble departed father. It is impossible for a man to be more loved and honoured by a whole nation after his death than Pasquale Paoli; and if posthumous fame is a second life, then Corsica's and Italy's greatest man of the eighteenth century lives a thousandfold—yes, lives in every Corsican heart, from the tottering graybeard who knew him in his youth, to the child on whose soul his high example is impressed. No greater name can be given to a man than "Father of his country." Flattery has often abused it and made it ridiculous; among the Corsicans I saw that it could also be applied with truth and justice.
Paoli contrasts with Napoleon, as philanthropy with self-love. No curses of the dead rise to execrate his name. At the nod of Napoleon, millions of human beings were murdered for the sake of fame and power. The blood that Paoli shed, flowed for freedom, and his country gave it freely as that mother-bird that wounds her breast to give her fainting brood to drink.
No battle-field makes Paoli's name illustrious; but his memory is here honoured by the foundation-school of Morosaglia, and this fame seems to me more human and more beautiful than the fame of Marengo or the Pyramids.
I visited this school, the bequest of the noble patriot. The old convent supplies an edifice. It consists of two classes; the lower containing one hundred and fifty scholars, the upper about forty. But two teachers are insufficient for the large number of pupils. The rector of the lower class was so friendly as to hold a little examination in my presence. I here again remarked the naïveté of the Corsican character, as displayed by the boys. There were upwards of a hundred, between the ages of six and fourteen, separated into divisions, wild, brown little fellows, tattered and torn, unwashed, all with their caps on their heads. Some wore crosses of honour suspended on red ribbons; and these looked comical enough on the breasts of the little brown rascals—sitting, perhaps, with their heads supported between their two fists, and staring, frank and free, with their black eyes at all within range—proud, probably, of being Paoli scholars. These honours are distributed every Saturday, and worn by the pupil for a week; a silly, and at the same time, hurtful French practice, which tends to encourage bad passions, and to drive the Corsican—in whom nature has already implanted an unusual thirst for distinction—even in his boyhood, to a false ambition. These young Spartans were reading Telemachus. On my requesting the rector to allow them to translate the French into Italian, that I might see how they were at home in their mother-tongue, he excused himself with the express prohibition of the Government, which "does not permit Italian in the schools." The branches taught were writing, reading, arithmetic, and the elements of geography and biblical history.
The schoolroom of the lower class is the chapter-hall of the old convent in which Clemens Paoli dreamed away the closing days of his life. Such a spacious, airy Aula as that in which these Corsican youngsters pursue their studies, with the view from its windows of the mighty hills of Niolo, and the battle-fields of their sires, would be an improvement in many a German university. The heroic grandeur of external nature in Corsica seems to me to form, along with the recollections of their past history, the great source of cultivation for the Corsican people; and there is no little importance in the glance which that Corsican boy is now fixing on the portrait yonder on the wall—for it is the portrait of Pasquale Paoli.
CHAPTER X.
CLEMENS PAOLI.
"Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."—Psalm cxliv.
The convent of Morosaglia is perhaps the most venerable monument of Corsican history. The hoary structure as it stands there, brown and gloomy, with the tall, frowning pile of its campanile by its side, seems itself a tradition in stone. It was formerly a Franciscan cloister. Here, frequently, the Corsican parliaments were held. Here Pasquale had his rooms, his bureaus, and often, during the summer, he was to be seen among the monks—who, when the time came, did not shrink from carrying the crucifix into the fight, at the head of their countrymen. The same convent was also a favourite residence of his brave brother Clemens, and he died here, in one of the cells, in the year 1793.
Clemens Paoli is a highly remarkable character. He resembles one of the Maccabees, or a crusader glowing with religious fervour. He was the eldest son of Hyacinth. He had served with distinction as a soldier in Naples; then he was made one of the generals of the Corsicans. But state affairs did not accord with his enthusiastic turn of mind. When his brother was placed at the head of the Government he withdrew into private life, assumed the garb of the Tertiaries, and buried himself in religious contemplation. Like Joshua, he lay entranced in prayer before the Lord, and rose from prayer to rush into battle, for the Lord had given his foes into his hand. He was the mightiest in fight, and the humblest before God. His gloomy nature has something in it prophetic, flaming, self-abasing, like that of Ali.
Wherever the danger was greatest, he appeared like an avenging angel. He rescued his brother at the convent of Bozio, when he was besieged there by Marius Matra; he expelled the Genoese from the district of Orezza, after a frightful conflict. He took San Pellegrino and San Fiorenzo; in innumerable fights he came off victorious. When the Genoese assaulted the fortified camp at Furiani with their entire force, Clemens remained for fifty-six days firm and unsubdued among the ruins, though the whole village was a heap of ashes. A thousand bombs fell around him, but he prayed to the God of hosts, and did not flinch, and victory was on his side.
Corsica owed her freedom to Pasquale, as the man who organized her resources; but to Clemens alone as the soldier who won it with his sword. He signalized himself also subsequently in the campaign of 1769, by the most splendid deeds of arms. He gained the glorious victory of Borgo; he fought desperately at Ponte Nuovo, and when all was lost, he hastened to rescue his brother. He threw himself with a handful of brave followers in the direction of Niolo, to intercept General Narbonne, and protect his brother's flight. As soon as he had succeeded in this, he hastened to Pasquale at Bastelica, and sorrowfully embarked with him for Tuscany.
He did not go to England. He remained in Tuscany; for the strange language of a foreign country would have deepened his affliction. Among the monks in the beautiful, solitary cloister of Vallombrosa, he sank again into fervent prayer and severe penance; and no one who saw this monk lying in prayer upon his knees, could have recognised in him the hero of patriot struggles, and the soldier terrible in fight.
After twenty years of cloister-life in Tuscany, Clemens returned shortly before his brother to Corsica. Once more his heart glowed with the hope of freedom for his country; but events soon taught the grayhaired hero that Corsica was lost for ever. In sorrow and penance he died in December of the same year in which his brother was summoned before the Convention, to answer the charge of high treason.
In Clemens, patriotism had become a cultus and a religion. A great and holy passion, stirred to an intense glow, is in itself religious; when it takes possession of a people, more especially when it does so in periods of calamity and severe pressure, it expresses itself as religious worship. The priests in those days preached battle from every pulpit, the monks marched with the ranks into the fight, and the crucifixes served instead of standards. The parliaments were generally held in convents, as if God himself were to preside over them, and once, as we saw in their history, the Corsicans by a decree of their Assembly placed the country under the protection of the Holy Virgin.
Pasquale, too, was religious. I saw in his house the little dark room which he had made into a chapel; it had been allowed to remain unchanged. He there prayed daily to God. But Clemens lay for six or seven hours each day in prayer. He prayed even in the thick of battle—a figure terrible to look on, with his beads in one hand and his musket in the other, clad like the meanest Corsican, and not to be recognised save by his great fiery eyes and bushy eyebrows. It is said of him that he could load his piece with furious rapidity, and that, always sure of his aim, he first prayed for mercy to the soul of the man he was about to shoot, then crying: "Poor mother!" he sacrificed his foe to the God of freedom. When the battle was over, he was gentle and mild, but always grave and profoundly melancholy. A frequent saying of his was: "My blood and my life are my country's; my soul and my thoughts are my God's."
Men of Pasquale's type are to be sought among the Greeks; but the types of Clemens among the Maccabees. He was not one of Plutarch's heroes; he was a hero of the Old Testament.
CHAPTER XI.
THE OLD HERMIT.
I had heard in Stretta that a countryman of mine was living there, a Prussian—a strange old man, lame, and obliged to use crutches. The townspeople had also informed him of my arrival. Just as I was leaving the chamber in which Clemens Paoli had died, lost in meditation on the character of this God-fearing old hero, my lame countryman came hopping up to me, and shook hands with me in the honest and hearty German style. I had breakfast set for us; we sat down, and I listened for several hours to the curious stories of old Augustine of Nordhausen.
"My father," he said, "was a Protestant clergyman, and wished to educate me in the Lutheran faith; but from my childhood I was dissatisfied with Protestantism, and saw well that the Lutheran persuasion was a vile corruption of the only true church—the church in spirit and in truth. I took it into my head to become a missionary. I went to the Latin School in Nordhausen, and remained there until I entered the classes of logic and rhetoric. And after learning rhetoric, I left my native country to go to the beautiful land of Italy, to a Trappist convent at Casamari, where I held my peace for eleven years."
"But, friend Augustine, how were you able to endure that?"
"Well, it needs a merry heart to bear it: a melancholy man becomes mad among the Trappists. I understood the carpenter-trade, and worked at it all day, beguiling my weariness by singing songs to myself in my heart."
"What had you to eat in the convent?"
"Two platefuls of broth, as much bread as we liked, and half a bottle of wine. I ate little, but I never left a drop of wine in my flask. God be praised for the excellent wine! The brother on my right was always hungry, and ate his two platefuls of broth and five rolls to the bargain."
"Have you ever seen Pope Pio Nono?"
"Yes, and spoken with him too, just like a friend. He was then bishop in Rieti; and, one Good-Friday, I went thither in my capote—I was in a different convent then—to fetch the holy oil. I was at that time very ill. The Pope kissed my capote, when I went to him in the evening to take my leave. 'Fra Agostino,' said he, 'you are sick, you must have something to eat.' 'My lord bishop,' said I, 'I never saw a brother eat on Good-Friday.' 'No matter, I give you a dispensation; I see you are sick.' And he sent to the best inn in the town, and they brought me half a fowl, some soup, wine, and confectionary; and the bishop made me sit down to table with him."
"What! did the holy Father eat on Good-Friday?"
"Only three nuts and three figs. After this I grew worse, and removed to Toscana. But one day I ceased to find pleasure in the ways of men; their deeds were hateful to me. I resolved to become a hermit. So I took my tools, purchased a few necessaries, and sailed to the little island of Monte Cristo. The island is nine miles[O] round; not a living thing dwells on it but wild goats, serpents, and rats. In ancient times the Emperor Diocletian banished Saint Mamilian there—the Archbishop of Palermo. The good saint built a church upon the island; a convent also was afterwards erected. Fifty monks once lived there—first Benedictines, then Cistercians, and afterwards Carthusians of the Order of St. Bruno. The monks of Monte Cristo built many hospitals, and did much good in Toscana; the hospital of Maria Novella in Florence, too, was founded by them. Then, you see, came the Saracens, and carried off the monks of Monte Cristo with their oxen and their servants; the goats they could not catch—they escaped to the mountains, and have ever since lived wild among rocks."
"Did you stay in the old convent?"
"No, it is in ruins. I lived in a cave, which I fitted up with the help of my tools. I built a wall, too, before the mouth of it."
"How did you spend the long days? You prayed a great deal, I suppose?"
"Ah, no! I am no Pharisee. One can't pray much. Whatever God wills must happen. I had my flute; and I amused myself with shooting the wild goats; or explored the island for stones and plants; or watched the sea as it rose and fell upon the rocks. I had books to read, too."
"Such as?"—
"The works of the Jesuit Paul Pater Segneri."
"What grows upon the island?"
"Nothing but heath and bilberries. There are one or two pretty little green valleys, and all the rest is gray rock. A Sardinian once visited the island, and gave me some seeds; so I grew a few vegetables and planted some trees."
"Are there any fine kinds of stone to be found there?"
"Well, there is beautiful granite, and black tourmaline, which is found in a white stone; and I also discovered three different kinds of garnets. At last I fell sick in Monte Cristo—sick to death, when there happily arrived a number of Tuscans, who carried me to the mainland. I have now been eleven years in this cursed island, living among scoundrels—thorough scoundrels. The doctors sent me here; but I hope to see Italy again before a year is over. There is no country in the world like Italy to live in, and they are a fine people the Italians. I am growing old, I have to go upon crutches; and I one day said to myself, 'What am I to do? I must soon give up my joiner's work, but I cannot beg;' so I went and roamed about the mountains, and by good fortune discovered Negroponte."
"Negroponte? what is that?"
"The clay with which they make pipes in the island of Negroponte; we call it meerschaum at home, you know. Ah, it is a beautiful earth—the very flower of minerals. The Negroponte here is as good as that in Turkey, and when I have my pipes finished, I shall be able to say that I am the first Christian that has ever worked in it."
Old Augustine would not let me off till I had paid a visit to his laboratory. He had established himself in one of the rooms formerly occupied by poor Clemens Paoli, and pointed out to me with pride his Negroponte and the pipes he had been engaged in making, and which he had laid in the sun to dry.
I believe that, once in his life, there comes to every man a time when he would fain leave the society of men, and go into the green woods and be a hermit, and an hour when his soul would gladly find rest even in the religious silence of the Trappist.
I have here told my reader the brief story of old Augustine's life, because it attracted me so strongly at the time, and seemed to me a true specimen of German character.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PONTE NUOVO.
"Gallia vicisti! profuso turpiter auro
Armis pauca, dolo plurima, jure nihil!"—The Corsicans.
I left Morosaglia before Ave Maria, to descend the hills to Ponte Nuovo. Near the battle-field is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, where the Diligence from Bastia arrives after midnight, and with it I intended to return to Bastia.
The evening was beautiful and clear—the stillness of the mountain solitude stimulated thought. The twilight is here very short. Hardly is Ave Maria over when the night comes.
I seldom hear the bells pealing Ave Maria without remembering those verses of Dante, in which he refers to the softened mood that descends with the fall of evening on the traveller by sea or land:—
"It was the hour that wakes regret anew
In men at sea, and melts the heart to tears,
The day whereon they bade sweet friends adieu,
And thrills the youthful pilgrim on his way
With thoughts of love, if from afar he hears
The vesper bell, that mourns the dying day."
A single cypress stands yonder on the hill, kindled by the red glow of evening, like an altar taper. It is a tree that suits the hour and the mood—an Ave Maria tree, monumental as an obelisk, dark and mournful. Those avenues of cypresses leading to the cloisters and burying-grounds in Italy are very beautiful. We have the weeping-willow. Both are genuine churchyard trees, yet each in a way of its own. The willow with its drooping branches points downwards to the tomb, the cypress rises straight upwards, and points from the grave to heaven. The one expresses inconsolable grief, the other believing hope. The symbolism of trees is a significant indication of the unity of man and nature, which he constantly draws into the sphere of his emotions, to share in them, or to interpret them. The fir, the laurel, the oak, the olive, the palm, have all their higher meaning, and are poetical language.
I saw few cypresses in Corsica, and these of no great size; and yet such a tree would be in its place in this Island of Death. But the tree of peace grows here on every hand; the war-goddess Minerva, to whom the olive is sacred, is also the goddess of peace.
I had fifteen miles to walk from Morosaglia, all the way through wild, silent hills, the towering summits of Niolo constantly in view, the snow-capped Cinto, Artiga, and Monte Rotondo, the last named nine thousand feet in height, and the highest hill in Corsica. It stood bathed in a glowing violet, and its snow-fields gleamed rosy red. I had already been on its summit, and recognised distinctly, to my great delight, the extreme pinnacle of rock on which I had stood with a goatherd. When the moon rose above the mountains, the picture was touched with a beauty as of enchantment.
Onwards through the moonlight and the breathless silence of the mountain wilds; not a sound to be heard, except sometimes the tinkling of a brook; the rocks glittering where they catch the moonlight like wrought silver; nowhere a village, nor a human soul. I went at hap-hazard in the direction where I saw far below in the valley the mists rising from the Golo. Yet it appeared to me that I had taken a wrong road, and I was on the point of crossing through a ravine to the other side, when I met some muleteers, who told me that I had taken not only the right but very shortest road to my destination.
At length I reached the Golo. The river flows through a wide valley; the air is full of fever, and is shunned. It is the atmosphere of a battle-field—of the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo. I was warned in Morosaglia against passing through the night-mists of the Golo, or staying long in Ponte alla Leccia. Those who wander much there are apt to hear the ghosts beating the death-drum, or calling their names; they are sure at least to catch fever, and see visions. I believe I had a slight touch of the last affection, for I saw the whole battle of the Golo before me, the frightful monk, Clemens Paoli in the thickest of it, with his great fiery eyes and bushy eyebrows, his rosary in the one hand, and his firelock in the other, crying mercy on the soul of him he was about to shoot. Wild flight—wounded—dying!
"The Corsicans," says Peter Cyrnæus, "are men who are ready to die." The following is a characteristic trait:—A Frenchman came upon a Corsican who had received his death-wound, and lay waiting for death without complaint. "What do you do," he asked, "when you are wounded, without physicians, without hospitals?" "We die!" said the Corsican, with the laconism of a Spartan. A people of such manly breadth and force of character as the Corsicans, is really scarcely honoured by comparison with the ancient heroic nations. Yet Lacedæmon is constantly present to me here. If it is allowable to say that the spirit of the Hellenes lives again in the wonderfully-gifted people of Italy, this is mainly true, in my opinion, as applied to the two countries—and they are neighbours of each other—of Tuscany and Corsica. The former exhibits all the ideal opulence of the Ionic genius; and while her poets, from Dante and Petrarch to the time of Ariosto, sang in her melodious language, and her artists, in painting, sculpture, and architecture, renewed the days of Pericles; while her great historians rivalled the fame of Thucydides, and the philosophers of her Academy filled the world with Platonic ideas, here in Corsica the rugged Doric spirit again revived, and battles of Spartan heroism were fought.
The young Napoleon visited the battle-field of the Golo in the year 1790. He was then twenty-one years old; but he had probably seen it before when a boy. There is something fearfully suggestive in this: Napoleon on the first battle-field that his eyes ever lighted on—a stripling, without career, and without stain of guilt, he who was yet to crimson a hemisphere—from the ocean to the Volga, and from the Alps to the wastes of Lybia—with the blood of his battle-fields.
It was a night such as this when the young Napoleon roamed here on the field of Golo. He sat down by the river, which on that day of battle, as the people tell, rolled down corpses, and ran red for four-and-twenty miles to the sea. The feverous mist made his head heavy, and filled it with dreams. A spirit stood behind him—a red sword in its hand. The spirit touched him, and sped away, and the soul of the young Napoleon followed the spirit through the air. They hovered over a field—a bloody battle was being fought there—a young general is seen galloping over the corpses of the slain. "Montenotte!" cried the demon; "and it is thou that fightest this battle!" They flew on. They hover over a field—a bloody battle is fighting there—a young general rushes through clouds of smoke, a flag in his hand, over a bridge. "Lodi!" cried the demon; "and it is thou that fightest this battle!" On and on, from battle-field to battle-field. They halt above a stream; ships are burning on it; its waves roll blood and corpses. "The Pyramids!" cries the demon; "this battle too thou shalt fight!" And so they continue their flight from one battle-field to another; and, one after the other, the spirit utters the dread names—"Marengo! Austerlitz! Eylau! Friedland! Wagram! Smolensk! Borodino! Beresina! Leipzig!" till he is hovering over the last battle-field, and cries, with a voice of thunder, "Waterloo! Emperor, thy last battle!—and here thou shalt fall!"
The young Napoleon sprang to his feet, there on the banks of the Golo, and he shuddered; he had dreamt a mad and a fearful dream.
Now that whole bloody phantasmagoria was a consequence of the same vile exhalations of the Golo that were beginning to take effect on myself. In this wan moonlight, and on this steaming Corsican battle-field, if anywhere, it must be pardonable to have visions. Above yon black, primeval, granite hills hangs the red moon—no! it is the moon no longer, it is a great, pale, bloody, horrid head that hovers over the island of Corsica, and dumbly gazes down on it—a Medusa-head, a Vendetta-head, snaky-haired, horrible. He who dares to look on this head becomes—not stone, but an Orestes seized by madness and the Furies, so that he shall murder in headlong passion, and then wander from mountain to mountain, and from cavern to cavern, behind him the avengers of blood and the sleuthhounds of the law that give him no moment's peace.
What fantasies! and they will not leave me! But, Heaven be praised! there is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, and I hear the dogs bark. In the large desolate room sit some men at a table round a steaming oil-lamp; they hang their heads on their breasts, and are heavy with sleep. A priest, in a long black coat, and black hat, is walking to and fro; I will begin a conversation with the holy man, that he may drive the vile rout of ghosts and demons out of my head.
But although this priest was a man of unshaken orthodoxy, he could not exorcise the wicked Golo-spirit, and I arrived in Bastia with the most violent of headaches. I complained to my hostess of what the sun and the fog had done to me, and began to believe I should die unlamented on a foreign shore. The hostess said there was no help unless a wise woman came and made the orazion over me. However, I declined the orazion, and expressed a wish to sleep. I slept the deepest sleep for one whole day and a night. When I awoke, the blessed sun stood high and glorious in the heavens.