I never felt safe on these occasions until I had entered into my bedroom and locked the door; as the bolder part of the troop sometimes came to the very door of the sitting-room upstairs: and I always felt an affinity with the poor fox pursued by his yelping pack of tormentors.
At length, emerging heated and indignant from my retirement, "Why," asked I, of the broad, good-humoured landlady, who, with Italian head-gear and voluble tongue, had just come upstairs, dispersing the juveniles on her way—"Why are your Corsican children such fiends, and how do they ever manage to grow up into such respectable, civil men and women?"
"Ah, mademoiselle," said she, "you must forgive them; they are very rude; but, voilà, they take you for men! At least, they say you are women dressed up in men's clothes. I heard them calling it out on the stairs," she continued. "One says, 'The tall one is a man!' and the other says, 'They are both men. Don't you see they have both men's hats, and men's cloaks, and black pantaloons?'"
Alas for English fashions of 1879! Ulsters, wideawakes, and tight black dresses suited the spring climate of Corsica uncommonly well; but not equally well the tastes of the inhabitants.
FOOTNOTES
[1] "Poems written in Barracks."
[2] Personal enemies of Canino, who betrayed him to the soldiers.
[3] A little prayer enveloping some relic, and worn as a charm about the person.
END OF VOL. I.