The children who followed me sang me songs too, the Marseillaise, the Girondist's March, and Bertram's Parting, the last with new words in honour of the President of France, the refrain always closing with Vive Louis Napoléon! Little Camillo could sing the Marseillaise best.
We looked for shells on the beach. There are as many of them as you can desire opposite the little nunnery which stands in the garden by the sea, and in which the Sisters of the Madonna alle Grazie live. The Madonna-Sisters have an enchanting view of sea and hill from their villa; and perhaps some of them have dreams of their lost romance of life and love, when the golden sickle of the moon is shining so beautifully above Monte Reparata as it is now. The strand is, as far as you can see, snow-white, broidered with coral-dust and the most exquisite shells. Little Camillo was indefatigable in picking up what he thought would please me. He was fondest, however, of the little living leppere—mussels which suck themselves fast to stones. These he brought out of the water, and forthwith consumed with great gusto, wondering that I would not share his feast. In the evening we bathed together, and swam through the phosphorescent waves amid a million sparks.
Beautiful child-world! It is good sometimes when its voices begin again to speak. The people of Isola Rossa will not let me leave them. They have taken it into their heads that I am a rich baron, and propose that I should buy an estate beside them. To lose one's-self here might be worth while.
"Yes, the Vendetta is our ruin!" said a citizen of the Red Islands to me. "Do you see the little mercato, our market-hall yonder, with its white pillars? Last year a citizen was walking up and down there; suddenly a shot was fired, and the man fell dead! In broad daylight Massoni had come into the town, had put a bullet into the breast of his foe yonder in the mercato, and away he was again into the hills; and that all in broad daylight!"
There is the house where Paoli was surprised, when the famous Dumouriez made his plot to capture him. And here landed, for the last time, Theodore von Neuhoff, King of the Corsicans, only to put out again to sea—for he had dreamed his dream of royalty to an end.
I went one day with an Alsatian of the tenth regiment, which is at present distributed over Corsica, to Monte Santa Reparata, and the paese of the same name. It is difficult to paint in words the picture of such a Corsican village among the hills. The reader will come nearest to it if he imagines rows of blackish towers, divided longitudinally so as properly to be only half towers, and furnished with windows, doors, and loop-holes. The houses are constructed of granite stones, often totally undressed, generally only covered with a coating of clay, from which sometimes plants grow. Very narrow and steep stairs of stone lead up to the door. The mountain Corsicans probably inhabited the same sort of dwellings in the times of the Etruscans and Carthaginians. I found everywhere poverty and a want of cleanliness; swine housing with the human inmates in cavernous little rooms, into which the light fell through the door. These poor people live high up on the mountains, in an ocean of air and light, and yet their abodes are those of troglodytes. I saw a pale young woman issue from one of these dens with a child in her arms, and asked her if she had ever felt herself well, since she lived constantly in the dark. She stared at me, and laughed.
In another house, I found a mother putting her three children to bed. All three stood naked on the clay floor, and looked sickly and wasted. The beds on which the poor things slept were very wretched little nests. These stout-hearted mountaineers are nurtured in poverty and misery. They are at once huntsmen, herdsmen, and husbandmen. Their sole wealth is the olive, the oil of which they sell in the towns. But not every one is rich in olives. Here, therefore, life is rendered miserable, not by the evils of civilisation, but by those of a primitive condition on which no advance has been made.
I went into the church, the black façade of which attracted me. The white spire is new. The steeples of the Corsican churches are not pointed, but end in a belfry, with a pierced, curving roof. The interior of the church had a gallery and a great altar, a singularly uncouth affair of whitened stone, with most extravagant decorations. Above the altar stood the inscription in Latin: "Holy Reparata, pray for thy people;" populus—it sounds antique and democratic. Some rude attempts at painting were meant to adorn the walls, and there were niches with half-projecting columns on each side, their capitals Corinthian, or entirely fanciful. An interdict lies at present on the Church of the Holy Reparata, and there is no mass read in it. On the death of their priest, the people refused to accept of the successor sent by the Bishop of Ajaccio. They split into two parties, and the feud became bloody. The interdict which was in consequence laid upon the church, has not yet settled the dispute.
I passed through the narrow and dirty lanes of the village to the edge of the valley, from which there is an extensive view of the range of hills enclosing the Balagna. Many brown villages lie along the circle of the hills, and many olive-woods. The arid rocks contrast powerfully with the green of the gardens and groves. The Corsican who guided me to this point, stuttered, and had erysipelas in his face; I believe he was half-witted. I made him name to me the villages in the dale of the Balagna. He told me, in a thick gurgling tone of voice, a great deal that I only half understood, but I understood very well what he meant when he pointed to more than one place, and gurgled: Ammazzato, ammazzato col colpo di fucile,—he was showing me the spots among the rocks where human blood had been shed. I shuddered, and left his disagreeable company as speedily as possible. I returned through the paese of Oggilione, descending by narrow shepherds' paths through olive-groves. Armed Corsicans came riding up on little horses, which clambered nimbly from rock to rock. Evening fell, and the desolate Monte Feliceto lay bathed in softest colours; a bell among the hills tinkled the Ave Maria, and a goat-herd on a slope blew his horn. All this harmonized beautifully; and by the time I reached Isola Rossa, my mood was once more idyllic.
The contrasts here are frightfully abrupt—child-life, shepherd-life, and blood-red murder.