Truly, it is hard for him who stands by this coffin to restrain his emotion, so sad, so moving is the great tragedy of a mother's heart that lies therein enclosed. What an undeserved fate!—and how came it that, in the bosom of this gay, young, unpretending woman, those world-convulsing forces and those men and city-devouring passions were to ripen?
CHAPTER VIII.
POZZO DI BORGO.
The house in the street Napoleon, in which the fugitive Murat lived, has been rebuilt in a style of great magnificence. The arms of the Pozzo di Borgo family, above the door, inform us to whom it belongs. After the Bonapartes, these Pozzi di Borgo are the most famous family in Ajaccio; they are of an old and noble stock, and their name began to be of note long before that of the Bonapartes. In the sixteenth century they distinguished themselves in the service of the Venetians. The Corsican poet, Biagino di Leca, who, in his epic called Il d'Ornano Marte, celebrates the achievements of Alfonso Ornano, praises also several of the Pozzi di Borgo, and predicts to their race undying fame.
The family has certainly attained a European importance, in the person of Count Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, the friend of Paoli, and in his youth the friend of the young Napoleon; but later, the unrelenting, the truly Corsican foe of the Emperor. He was born in Alata, a village near Ajaccio, on the 8th of March 1768; he studied law in Pisa together with Carlo Bonaparte, and afterwards made himself conspicuous in Corsica, first as revolutionary democrat, then as Paolist. In the year 1791 he was representative for Ajaccio, then Procurator-general and Paoli's right hand. When Corsica allied herself with England, this clever politician was chosen president of the Council of State, under the viceroyship of Elliot. People say that he brought his patron, Paoli, into bad odour with the English, in order to make his own influence supreme. He afterwards left Corsica, made several journeys to London, travelled to Vienna, to Russia, to Constantinople, to Syria; wandering from country to country and court to court, this unwearied foe kept stirring up with ceaseless activity the hatred of the cabinets against Napoleon. Alexander had made him a member of the Russian Privy Council in 1802. Napoleon, in his turn, pursued him with a hatred equally bitter; he longed to have this man within his power—this artful and dreaded antagonist that crossed him at every turn. At the peace of Presburg he demanded that he should be delivered into his hands. Had he obtained this demand, he would have done with Pozzo di Borgo what Charles XII. did with Patkul. Remarkable is this enmity—it is true Corsican Vendetta—Corsican hatred playing a part in universal history. It was Pozzo di Borgo who induced Bernadotte to become the active opponent of Napoleon; it was he who impelled the allies to a speedy march on Paris; it was he who set the King of Rome aside; he who, at the Congress of Vienna, insisted that Napoleon should be banished from the dangerous Elba to a distant island. At Waterloo he fought with armed hand against his great adversary, and received a wound. And when at length his gigantic but now for ever vanquished foe lay dead in St. Helena, he uttered those haughty and terrible words: "I have not killed Napoleon; but I have thrown the last shovelful of earth upon him!"
Pozzo di Borgo earned a Russian coronet, and the honour of remaining the perpetual representative of all Russian states at the court of France. Living in Paris, he became a frank opponent of the reaction, and thereby endangered his relation to the courts. Notwithstanding his career, he was, and remained, a Corsican. I have been told that he never laid aside his Corsican habits of life: he loved his country. It was, one may say, another victory of his over Napoleon, that he took from him the gratitude of his countrymen. Napoleon did nothing for Corsica, Pozzo di Borgo much. He had the works of the two Corsican historians, Filippini and Peter Cyrnæus, published at his own expense, and Gregori dedicated to him a collection of the statutes. Pozzo di Borgo's name is now inseparably connected with the three greatest documents of Corsican history, and is imperishable. He freely spent his large means on charitable foundations, and in general beneficence towards his countrymen. He died a private individual at Paris, on the 15th of January 1842, at the age of seventy-four, at variance with the world about him, sick and sad at heart, and weary of life. He was one of the most skilful diplomatists and clearest heads of the present century.
His immense fortune passed to his nephews, who have bought rich estates in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio. A few years ago, one of them was murdered close to the town. He had the management of the funds devoted by Count Carlo Andrea to benevolent purposes, and had drawn odium upon himself by acts of injustice. I was told, besides, that he had seduced a girl; and that, as he refused to pay a certain large sum demanded in reparation by her kinsfolk, they resolved upon his death. One day when he was driving from his villa to the town, these men stopped and surrounded the carriage, and called to him: "Come out, nephew of Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo!" The unhappy man obeyed instantly. The murderers then coolly completed this summary execution, in broad daylight, and on the open highway, as if it were an act of popular justice against a criminal. Their shots, however, had not quite killed the man. The murderers placed him in his carriage, and bade the coachman drive homewards, that the nephew of Pozzo di Borgo might die in his bed. They then took to the woods, where they met with their death some time after, in a fight with the gendarmes.
Such is one shocking instance of the rude popular justice still so prevalent in Corsica. I shall here relate another. The circumstances excite our astonishment and admiration, but are at the same time exceedingly painful. The scene is Alata, the native village of the Pozzo di Borgo family, a few miles from Ajaccio.
A CORSICAN BRUTUS.
Two grenadiers belonging to a French regiment, forming, as Genoese auxiliaries, the garrison of Ajaccio, one day deserted. They fled to the hills of Alata, and kept themselves concealed there in the wild fastnesses, subsisting on the hospitality of the poor but kind-hearted shepherds.