There was the fish-market, for example. I never omitted paying a morning visit to the new arrivals from the sea; and when the fishermen had caught anything unusual, they showed it me in a friendly way, and would say—"This, Signore, is a murena, and this is the razza, and these are the pesce spada, and the pesce prete, and the beautiful red triglia, and the capone, and the grongo." Yonder in the corner, as below caste, sit the pond-fishers: along the east coast of Corsica are large ponds, separated from the sea by narrow tongues of land, but connected with it by inlets. The fishermen take large and well-flavoured fish in these, with nets of twisted rushes, eels in abundance—mugini, ragni, and soglie. The prettiest of all these fish is the murena; it is like a snake, and as if formed of the finest porphyry. It pursues the lobster (legusta), into which it sucks itself; the legusta devours the scorpena, and the scorpena again the murena. So here we have another version of the clever old riddle of the wolf, the lamb, and the cabbage, and how they were to be carried across a river. I am too little of a diplomatist to settle this intricate cross-war of the three fishes; they are often caught all three in the same net. Tunny and anchovies are caught in great quantities in the gulfs of Corsica, especially about Ajaccio and Bonifazio. The Romans had no liking for Corsican slaves—they were apt to be refractory; but the Corsican fish figured on the tables of the great, and even Juvenal has a word of commendation for them.
The market in the Place Favalelli presents in the morning a fresh, lively, motley picture. There sit the peasant women with their vegetables, and the fruit-girls with their baskets, out of which the beautiful fruits of the south look laughingly. One only needs to visit this market to learn what the soil of Corsica can produce in the matter of fruit; here are pears and apples, peaches and apricots, plums of every sort; there green almonds, oranges and lemons, pomegranates; near them potatoes, then bouquets of flowers, yonder green and blue figs, and the inevitable pomi d'oro (pommes d'amour); yonder again the most delicious melons, at a soldo or penny each; and in August come the muscatel-grapes of Cape Corso. In the early morning, the women and girls come down from the villages round Bastia, and bring their fruit into the town. Many graceful forms are to be seen among them. I was wandering one evening along the shore towards Pietra Nera, and met a young girl, who, with her empty fruit-basket on her head, was returning to her village. "Buona sera—Evviva, Siore." We were soon in lively conversation. This young Corsican girl related to me the history of her heart with the utmost simplicity;—how her mother was compelling her to marry a young man she did not like. "Why do you not like him?" "Because his ingegno does not please me, ah madonna!" "Is he jealous?" "Come un diavolo, ah madonna! I nearly ran off to Ajaccio already." As we walked along talking, a Corsican came up, who, with a pitcher in his hand, was going to a neighbouring spring. "If you wish a draught of water," said he, "wait a little till I come down, and you, Paolina, come to me by and bye: I have something to say to you about your marriage."
"Look you, sir," said the girl, "that is one of our relations; they are all fond of me, and when they meet me, they do not pass me with a good evening; and none of them will hear of my marrying Antonio." By this time we were approaching her house. Paolina suddenly turned to me, and said with great seriousness—"Siore, you must turn back now; if I go into my village along with you, the people will talk ill of me (faranne mal grido). But come to-morrow, if you like, and be my mother's guest, and after that we will send you to our relations, for we have friends enough all over Cape Corso." I returned towards the city, and in presence of the unspeakable beauty of the sea, and the silent calm of the hills, on which the goat-herds had begun to kindle their fires, my mood became quite Homeric, and I could not help thinking of the old hospitable Phæacians and the fair Nausicaa.
The head-dress of the Corsican women is the mandile, a handkerchief of any colour, which covers the forehead, and smoothly enwrapping the head, is wound about the knot of hair behind; so that the hair is thus concealed. The mandile is in use all over Corsica; it looks Moorish and Oriental, and is of high antiquity, for there are female figures on Etrurian vases represented with the mandile. It is very becoming on young girls, less so on elderly women; it makes the latter look like the Jewish females. The men wear the pointed brown or red baretto, the ancient Phrygian cap, which Paris, son of Priam, wore. The marbles representing this Trojan prince give him the baretto; the Persian Mithras also wears it, as I have observed in the common symbolic group where Mithras is seen slaying the bull. Among the Romans, the Phrygian cap was the usual symbol of the barbarians; the well-known Dacian captives of the triumphal arch of Trajan which now stand on the arch of Constantine, wear it; so do other barbarian kings and slaves, Sarmatian and Asiatic, whom we find represented in triumphal processions. The Venetian Doge also wore a Phrygian cap as a symbol of his dignity.
The women in Corsica carry all their burdens on their head, and the weight they will thus carry is hardly credible; laden in this way, they often hold the spindle in their hand, and spin as they walk along. It is a picturesque sight, the women of Bastia carrying their two-handled brazen water-pitchers on their head; these bear a great resemblance to the antique consecrated vases of the temples; I never saw them except in Bastia; beyond the mountains they fetch their water in stone pitchers, of rude but still slightly Etruscan form.
"Do you see yonder woman with the water-pitcher on her head?" "Yes, what is remarkable about her?" "She might perhaps have been this day a princess of Sweden, and the consort of a king." "Madre di Dio!" "Do you see yonder village on the hillside? that is Cardo. The common soldier Bernadotte one day fell in love with a peasant girl of Cardo. The parents would not let the poor fellow court her. The povero diavolo, however, one day became a king, and if he had married that girl, she would have been a queen; and now her daughter there, with the water on her head, goes about and torments herself that she is not Princess of Sweden." It was on the highway from Bastia to San Fiorenzo that Bernadotte worked as a common soldier on the roads. At Ponte d'Ucciani he was made corporal, and very proud he was of his advancement. He now watched as superintendent over the workmen; afterwards he copied the rolls for Imbrico, clerk of court at Bastia. There is still a great mass of them in his handwriting among the archives at Paris.
It was on the Bridge of Golo, some miles from Bastia, that Massena was made corporal. Yes, Corsica is a wonderful island. Many a one has wandered among the lonely hills here, who never dreamed that he was yet to wear a crown. Pope Formosus made a beginning in the ninth century—he was a native of the Corsican village of Vivario; then a Corsican of Bastia followed him in the sixteenth century, Lazaro, the renegade, and Dey of Algiers; in the time of Napoleon, a Corsican woman was first Sultaness of Morocco; and Napoleon himself was first Emperor of Europe.
CHAPTER III.
ENVIRONS OF BASTIA.
How beautiful the walks are here in the morning, or at moon-rise! A few steps and you are by the sea, or among the hills, and there or here, you are rid of the world, and deep in the refreshing solitude of nature. Dense olive-groves fringe some parts of the shore. I often lay among these, beside a little retired tomb, with a Moorish cupola, the burial-vault of some family, and looked out upon the sea, and the three islands on its farthest verge. It was a spot of delicious calm; the air was so sunny, so soothingly still, and wherever the eye rested, holiday repose and hermit loneliness, a waste of brown rocks on the strand, covered with prickly cactus, solitary watch-towers, not a human being, not a bird upon the water; and to the right and left, warm and sunny, the high blue hills.