Had our diligence upset, there would have been seven mortuary crosses to bedeck the mountain side.
CHAPTER XIV.
A BANDIT VILLAGE.
Bocognano is, par excellence, the village of the bandits. It was formerly the home of the brothers Bella Coschia, the latest and most famous of the bandits of the present generation.
It is difficult to get at the truth regarding these two men, but there is little doubt that they have never had much to recommend them. Out of their own village they are generally admitted to have been regular ruffians; although, in Bocognano, they are declared to be most pleasing fellows.
There is a little shyness, however, in speaking of their errors, especially in this neighbourhood, which perhaps is not much to be wondered at, considering that sixty members of their family inhabit the village. The younger of the two brothers is only forty-two, and the elder one not more than fifty; but for some years these wild animals have shown signs of taming, and now lead a tolerably harmless and inoffensive life on the mountain side, where, by tacit consent, so long as they thus keep out of the way, they remain unmolested by the gendarmes.
A dark ravine on the blue flank of Monte D'Oro, a few miles above and beyond Bocognano, was pointed out to us as the almost inaccessible home of the two bandits.
Their native village receives from them the milk of their mountain goats, and supplies them with the necessaries of life.
By day, the men remain in their rocky stronghold; but at night they constantly descend the ravine and visit their friends and relations at Bocognano.
Night and day are the same to these wild, lawless climbers, who leap down the precipitous crags which separate their cavern dwelling from the village, with fearless security, in the darkest night.
A gentleman we afterwards met, who had been introduced, by special favour, to their stronghold, and appeared to have relished his call much, described them as well-educated men. They could both, he said, speak and read either French or Italian; and he had seen a letter written by one of them in the most idiomatic French. The younger brother, he asserted, became a bandit because of the conscription; preferring a roving and lawless life, and amateur skirmishes on his own account with the gendarmerie, to a forced service in the French army.