As our carriage drew up, three ghostly beings, draped in white sheeting from head to foot, with nought but black beard and shining black eyes emerging, stood motionless, a yard or two off, silently watching our unbelieving footsteps as we entered the inn. Calvi is full of these stately Arabs. Every corner you turn, you find one or two sitting squatting in the sun in their white sheets, still as statues, but silently following you with eyes full of a contemptuous astonishment.
After a hasty lunch in a room overhanging the emerald sea, and where a balcony looked straight into its depths—a room with the most perfect view ever framed by nature, but greatly marred by man's neglect of drainage—we went out to explore the citadel.
Passing along the gay quay, and ascending a steep slope of stones and rubbish between the houses, we found ourselves on the hill from whence sprung the bastion walls, surrounded by sea on every side save one.
It made one almost giddy to stand at the base of these great sloping walls, and look up their lofty face; and one felt no surprise at the numerous shocks they had defied. Then, by a steep narrow ascent, cut in the rock and protected by stony walls, we mounted into the heart of the citadel, and the haute ville within. This haute ville, enclosed by the fortifications, is the original old town; the basse ville below being of much later date.
The houses inside the citadel were all of stone, and although close together, in narrow, winding stony streets, up which no vehicle could possibly go, were built with some attempt at regularity, and were not so dirty looking as those in the lower town. There being absolutely nothing but stone in the haute ville, the streets were comparatively free from dust, and the high wind that swept over this lofty perch sent a sweet refreshing air through the walled-in causeways.
The church stood in the main street, in the centre of the citadel. Repairs were going on inside, and we strolled in, being soon joined by the curé, a man about thirty, with a thin pale face and a sweet smile. Gentle goodness was written on the features of this man; and very shy was he before three strange Englishwomen, and altogether nervous of his French idioms, but with a Corsican enthusiasm in his wild dark eyes. The church, he told us, was built in 1100, but partially destroyed by fire (coming, of course, from an enemy's bombshell!) about two hundred years ago, as an inscription cut upon the outside steps testified. He showed us the old font of black and white and red Corsican marble, belonging to the fifteenth century, of which age also was the marble altar. A strange old bas-relief in the chancel wall was much older than this, and had been only lately found and uncovered. "Calvi," said the curé, with his dark eyes glowing, "has been bombarded eight or ten times, but she has never succumbed. The church is as strong as the rest of her fortifications, and has resisted many a siege. She has never been taken, 'si ce n'était pas par les Anglais.'" He showed us a large, badly executed statue of our Lord, placed within a most curious and beautiful old frame, composed of separate small squares of oil-paintings on sacred subjects.
"See," he said, "there used to be a life-size picture of the Saviour inside that frame, and it was very ancient and beautiful. It hung upon that wall opposite, under the western window; but the English, in bombarding our citadel, sent a ball clean through the wall and shot away the picture. So we removed it here behind the altar, and placed this statue within the frame."
"Ah!" said No. 1, "that was Nelson's doing."
"Yes," said the curé, with one of his shy bright smiles, "it was your great naval commander, Nelson. But, although he took Calvi, and destroyed the picture, he left an eye behind him!"
And this was true enough.