This was never the case in Corsica. For centuries the people have prided themselves upon their honesty, and a murder for greed of gold is unknown. The traveller's purse and his person are safe, amongst the wildest and roughest of the inhabitants. Quarrelling over money interests is unusual; and a vendetta is said to have been rarely, if ever, caused by a dispute over such matters.
The killing and slaying amongst the people has been barbarous enough, Heaven knows; but it has rarely owed its origin to any lower motive than a mistaken or exaggerated idea of honour, or, at the worst, a love of lawless freedom and adventure.
The difference between the Corsican bandit and the Sardinian or Sicilian brigand is the difference of races far apart from each other as the poles. Notwithstanding their contiguity, the two islands have rarely had anything to do with each other for many centuries, and the wild white breakers that roll, nine months of the year, between the "Bouches de Bonifacio," separate two nationalities that have never known sympathy.
A Corsican bandit can occasionally be a much nearer neighbour than one suspects.
A gentleman at Bocognano told us that a bandit, about a year ago, had spent six months in a cave at the bottom of a garden close to Ajaccio. During this time, he was regularly supplied at night with food by one or two friends, at which time also he emerged from his hiding-place and walked abroad with caution; and, at the end of the six months, took his departure and escaped to the mountains near. The garden was close to the house, and the bandit, in his gloomy hole, must have listened almost daily to the voices of the children playing about, and watched the householder and his wife as they strolled up and down.
It was only after the bird had flown that the owner was made aware of the strange visitor he had unconsciously harboured for so long in the vicinity of his home.
"Did it not give him a shudder to think of the man lying there close by, night and day?" I asked.
"Oh no," was the reply; "why should he fear? The bandit had no quarrel with him."
Walking through the lonely mountains, and in and out of the wild country rocks, one feels that one is in the natural country of the fierce outlaw; but in sunny, modern, cheery little Ajaccio, it is almost as difficult to realize the existence or the close proximity of the bandit as it would be in a Belgravian drawing-room.
For some time after leaving the dirty uninteresting-looking little village of Bocognano, the road continues very fine, descending constantly among magnificent mountain forms, heaped together in every direction, and passing under the grateful shade of young-leaved oaks and budding chestnuts. Miniature Geissbach falls dropped beside us, and long-haired goats, black, and brown, and parti-coloured, with graceful heads and large shy eyes, bounded past in terror.