The road itself was shaded in parts by the great crags that hung overhead, and in parts by avenues of chestnuts; while many a gurgling little stream rushed down the hill-side and ran merrily across our path. In front, filling up the end of the gorge, sometimes hidden by massive rocks or sudden luxuriance of foliage, rose the stately white head of Monte Rotondo.
Looking back, the town of Corte rose from amongst its coronal of hills with beautiful effect, the long cross-topped church spire pointing faintly into the bright blue sky, and the white citadel on its strange precipitous eminence, peering, as it seemed, into heaven itself.
It was one of the hottest days we had felt in Corsica, and, beautiful though the walk was, it was almost pain to hurry, umbrella in hand, from one shady spot to another. If ever snakes would stand upon their tips and dance in the sun together, as our driver once informed us he had seen them do, it would have been to-day! The lizards on the glaring walls seemed countless; and, wherever the glare was intensest, there the little green husband and brown wife basked together in loving enjoyment.
Very thankful were we at last to sit down on some large boulders beside the rushing waters, where a grove of thickly growing chestnuts threw a grateful shade around. The river here had thrown up quite a little shore of gravel, now partially grassed over with soft green turf; and the chestnut pods of last summer almost covered the ground at our feet.
At a short distance from us, stood, on a little grassy plain, beneath a blighted tree trunk, a tiny chapel, about six feet high and two feet wide, containing a golden image of the Madonna.
It had the appearance of a doll's house, and somehow looked out of place beside that wide, wild, tumultuous river. This was about two miles out of Corte; but, considerably nearer the town, is a much more singular chapel.
Chapel, perhaps, is scarcely the word for it, since it is only a species of box, or square hole, formed by nature or blasting, in a large block of solid rock by the roadside. The hole is about three feet square and deep, and is glassed over in front. Inside this strange little tabernacle is a highly coloured, well-modelled figure of a man, with one of his trouser-legs turned up to show a remarkably life-like wound on the knee, to which he draws the attention of the passer-by with a pathetic countenance. A dog, looking rather ashamed of himself, stands beside the pilgrim and completes the group.
This individual is, we are informed, San Rocco of rather obscure memory, and beneath the tabernacle is the following inscription, cut into the rock:—"Fermati, Passegioro, e prega intanto se vuoi l'assistanza di San Rocco."
The little white oratory fixed in the huge glaring rock, with the tiny stone steps beside it, and the Restonico roaring beneath it, would have been a picturesque sight to English eyes, had it not been that the figure within reminded one irresistibly and most unpleasantly of our late tormentors, the Italian beggars, with their officiously displayed surgical horrors.
According to Baring-Gould, in his "Lives of the Saints," San Rocco, or Saint Roch, was a rather mythical personage. All that is authentic about him is that he was a Frenchman, a native of Montpellier, who went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and, on his return, not being recognized, was taken up as a spy, and died miserably in the common gaol. He was of good family and some means (which he forsook for the sake of his pilgrimage), and died about the year A.D. 1350. Legend adds, that whilst in Italy, where the plague at this time was raging, he miraculously cured thousands by making over them the sign of the cross, until himself attacked; when, creeping into a miserable hovel, he was supplied by a friendly dog with necessary food. An angel subsequently touched him upon the thigh, from which place the plague boil rose and burst. When dying in the Montpellier prison, St. Roch prayed that all invoking him should be henceforth delivered from the plague; and an angel appeared with the written promise that his patronage should prove the perfect cure of all suffering from this scourge.