Finally came a troop with rich purple capes. These were carrying, with some difficulty, an immense statue of St. Joseph, gilt all over, and surrounded by a gold frame. Four of the men bore the image on stout poles, whilst a fifth held it straight in the centre.
This troop was evidently the "picked lot" of the procession, for they chanted, as they walked, an extraordinary dirge-like chant, and were accompanied by a few priests in black cassocks, likewise singing.
I have seldom seen anything much more picturesque than that gay procession, as it wound with its banners under the shady avenue, and up the hill-side towards the little church, now lost, now seen, between the narrow crooked streets, the weird chant dying and rising by turns on the quiet evening air.
Everything solemn, however, has its travesty, I imagine, and children always reproduce in their games what has most impressed them.
So, an hour or two later, when the twilight was falling, and the faithful were mostly in church, there came the parody of the afternoon's procession.
Hearing a prodigious drumming, and the shouts of children, I looked out and saw a collection of about twenty or thirty of the ragged barefoot urchins of Corte, promenading the street in solemn procession, shouting a song that I fear was profane, at the top of their voices, drumming energetically with an old spoon upon a broken brass can that they had evidently picked up from the roadside, and following the lead of a bold-faced, pretty boy, who bore aloft the seedy remains of a large wooden cross, which had apparently been previously used in church decoration, as it still showed the remnants of withered moss and evergreens.
CHAPTER XII.
SAN ROCCO BY THE RESTONICO.
The environs of Corte abound in lovely walks. Surrounded as it is by mountain, ravine, and river, this is no wonder. Certainly, one not easily rivalled, is to be found in the valley of the Restonico, one of the two rivers which rush seething and boiling just below the town.
We strolled into this beautiful vale quite by accident, after hastily skirting the streets, to avoid those "horrid boys." The road, which was rough but broad, wound for miles through a narrow gorge, bordered on both sides by the wildest and steepest walls of rock, at the bottom of which swirled, in mingled white foam and malachite green, over a boulder-strewn bed, the busy Restonico.
The rocks upon the opposite side especially were inaccessibly steep, and appeared about five hundred feet high; but were in places clothed by rich herbage, and, here and there, wherever their straight sides sloped a little, covered by thick groves of chestnut trees.