In Bastia there are two towns, an old and a new. The new is certainly at the present time a little cleaner than the old, but given sufficient time, it will surely become equally unpleasant to the nose. In the new town stands a statue of Napoleon, looking dreamily away across the harbour to that little island of Elba, where he spent a period of short exile from France. As someone has remarked, the stone figure seems to be saying, “How could you expect that little island to hold me?”
OLD HOUSES, BASTIA.
It is to the new town that the ships come that carry the produce of the island to other lands. The quays are always busy and crowded, and people have to pick their way amongst piles of cork, stacks of wine-bottles, casks of olive-oil, and loads of charcoal.
CHAPTER VII
AJACCIO AND NAPOLEON
Ajaccio as we see it to-day is not an old town. The fortress that is known to have existed here in earlier times has disappeared, and the city that was the seat of a bishopric for hundreds of years has vanished, without leaving a trace of its former existence behind. The modern Ajaccio, or rather, the older part of the modern Ajaccio, was established in the fifteenth century by the Genoese on a site about a mile to the south of the old hill-city which tradition asserts to have once flourished there.
The chief feature of Ajaccio as one sees it on arriving by steamer from Marseilles is the gaiety of its aspect. The tall houses are painted pale blue, pink, or light green, and in the early morning, when the face of the gulf is without a ripple, the many-coloured town is reflected as in a Swiss lake. It is set in a framework of high mountains, which until late spring remain crowned and adorned with masses of snow. The streets are lined with palms and orange and lemon trees, which give the place quite an Oriental appearance. The trees at Easter are laden with fruit, but the ripe oranges are left severely alone by the children in the streets, for they are bitter and unpleasant to the taste.
The men walk about in the squares, sit at the cafés, lounge on the benches, and stare at the sea, and seem to know little of the meaning of work. What they want in the way of food, clothing, and rent is obtained for them by their hard-working women-folk. The women are seen riding and driving mules, carrying water, buying and selling in the markets. The general rule is that the women do all the work, while the men sit and think. If their thinking is equal to their sitting, they must be a very thoughtful race. They do nothing else. Even the only engineer, motor and cycle repairer in Ajaccio is a wrinkled old woman.
At all hours of the day women assemble at the public fountain, which also serves as the public washing-place. These women are mostly dressed in black, for a reason that will be best understood after reading the chapter on “The Vendetta.”