This was the probable commencement of a life which, at three and twenty, was to end stained by so much crime. That the young brigand was all bad, it is impossible to believe, reading Gregorovius' account.
Death was no terrible stranger to him; he had been accustomed to its pale face from boyhood, and he was not likely to flinch even before its more horrible appearance on the public scaffold.
With his one arm bound behind his back (for he had lost the other in a fight with the gendarmes), he walked to his death firmly and quietly. There was no vulgar air of braggadocio about him, no attempt to excite any momentary popular sympathy by dramatic means. He died unflinchingly, not as a hero, but as a penitent, acknowledging his black deeds. "I pray God and the world for forgiveness," said the young murderer, with native brevity, on the scaffold, "for I acknowledge that I have done much evil."
I will not here stop to speak of the Bella Coschia brothers, the last two bandits whose wild deeds have made them famous in Corsica. They are yet alive, and not much beyond middle age; but their history belongs to another part of the island, where I heard much of them.
I must close this chapter with a dirge, or vocero, roughly translated from the Corsican patois, and which was improvised at the funeral of a bandit called Canino, some years ago.
These voceri are one of the peculiarities of Corsica. Until quite lately, it was constantly the custom, at the funeral of any great or popular person, or, indeed, over the coffin of any man, woman, or child whose death was due to accident, murder, or any sudden and terrible circumstance, for the nearest of kin (usually the sister or mother of the dead person) to break out into some impromptu song of lamentation, couched in rude but often stirring verse.
These mournful dirges were striking in their rugged but earnest simplicity; and fortunately some of them have been preserved and printed at Ajaccio.
The custom of singing the vocero, like most other ancient and romantic customs, is now, however, slowly but surely dying out in the island.
VOCERO OVER THE DEAD BODY OF CANINO, A BANDIT.
BY HIS SISTER.