There has been there, certainly, a commencement of operations, for a large square, gaping hole, cut out with a punch, is still open in the ground, showing along its crumbling sides, like a leopard’s spots, red slabs with brown veins, and at the bottom, in the brambles, enormous blocks of the marble, called in the trade “black-heart” (marble spotted with red and brown), condemned blocks that no one could make anything of for want of a road leading to the quarry or a harbour to make the coast accessible for freight ships, and for want, above all, of subsidies considerable enough to carry out one or the other of these two projects. So the quarry remains abandoned, at a few cable-lengths from the shore, as cumbrous and useless as Robinson Crusoe’s canoe in the same unfortunate circumstances. These details of the heart-rending story of our sole territorial wealth were furnished by a miserable caretaker, shaking with fever, whom I found in the low-ceilinged room of the yellow house trying to roast a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a pistachio bush.
This man, who in himself is the whole staff of the Territorial Bank in Corsica, is Paganetti’s foster-father, an old lighthouse-keeper upon whom the solitude does not weigh. Our director-general leaves him there partly for charity and partly because letters dated from the Taverna quarry, now and again, make a good show at the shareholders’ meetings. I had the greatest difficulty extracting a little information from this poor creature, three parts savage, who looked upon me with cautious mistrust, half hidden behind the long hair of his goat-skin pelone. He told me, however, without intending it, what the Corsicans understand by the word “railway,” and why they put on mysterious airs when they speak of it. As I was trying to find out if he knew anything about the scheme for a railway in the country, this old man, instead of smiling knowingly like his compatriots, said, quite naturally, in passable French, his voice rusty and benumbed like an ancient, little-used lock:
“Oh, sir, no need of a railway here.”
“But it would be most valuable, most useful; it would facilitate communications.”
“I don’t say no; but with the police we have enough here.”
“The policemen?”
“Certainly.”
This quid pro quo went on for some five minutes before I discovered that here the secret police service is called “the railway.” As there are many Corsican policemen on the Continent they use this euphemism to designate the ignoble calling they follow. You inquire of the relations, “Where is your brother Ambrosini? What is your uncle Barbicaglia doing?” They will answer with a little wink, “He has a place on the railway,” and every one knows what that means. Among the people, the peasants, who have never seen a railway and don’t know what it is, it is quite seriously believed that the great occult administration of the Imperial police has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the country shares this touching simplicity of belief. It shows you the real state of the “Line from Ajaccio to Bastia, passing by Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio, etc.,” as it is written on the big, green-backed books of the house of Paganetti. In fact all the goods of the Territorial Bank consist of a few sign-boards and two ruins, the whole not worthy of lying in the “old materials” yard in the Rue Saint-Ferdinand; every night as I go to sleep I hear the old vanes grating and the old doors banging on emptiness.
But in this case, where have gone, where are going now, the enormous sums M. Jansoulet has spent during the last five months—not to count what came from the outside, attracted by the magic of his name? I thought, as you did, that all these soundings, borings, purchasings of land that the books set forth in fine round-hand were exaggerated beyond measure. But who could suspect such effrontery? This is why the director was so opposed to the idea of bringing me on the electioneering trip. I don’t want to have an explanation now. My poor Nabob has quite enough trouble in this election. Only, whenever we get back, I shall lay before him all the details of my long inquiry, and, whether he wants it or not, I will get him out of this den of thieves. They have finished below. Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, pulling up the slip-knot of his long peasant’s purse, which looks to me well filled. The bargain is made, I conclude. Good-bye, hurriedly, my dear M. Joyeuse; remember me to your daughters and ask them to keep a tiny little place for me round the work-table.
PAUL DE GERY.