"Oh yes, you are, mademoiselle. You know you have lots of property in England. Why not buy a little of my land? It is very good land, and I have a great deal to sell round these parts."
The wink the old fellow again gave his companions roused the indignation of No. 3.
"How very rich you must be, monsieur!" she exclaimed sardonically.
"I, mademoiselle? Why so? I am a poor Corsican."
"To have so much good property to sell. Whereas I do not possess a rood."
The old fellow grunted, and passed on to the carriage, to continue his inquiries of No. 2; whilst his companions laughed good-humouredly at his discomfiture.
At half-past two, we started again, up the steep ascent to Bocognano, through wooded hills and fine crags, every minute more closely enwrapped in the grand overhanging mountains, and Monte d'Oro growing steeper, bluer, and more furrowed on our left.
The diligence to Corte was not far behind us, lumbering up the dusty ascent slowly; and a few miles from Bocognano, we passed a woman lying on the grass by the roadside with a harnessed horse cropping beside her.
At the sound of our carriage wheels she raised herself up, and smiled and nodded to Antonio with some laughing remark in a deep bass voice, to which Antonio returned his usual grave nod, without response. She was a huge bony woman, with a rough, coarse face, and manly gait and voice, and, Antonio told us, had, until the last few years, been one of the regular coachmen on this diligence route, driving her horses from here to Bocognano, of which village she was a native. Now, however, male coachmen having become fashionable upon the public diligences, she was degraded to her present occupation, which consisted in bringing an extra horse to this spot for the last and steepest pull up to Bocognano, and undertaking the post of additional whipper and shouter to the exhausted horses. As she was a drunkard, a great swearer, and a most violent character, the change was, perhaps, as well for the diligence passengers; and when at the entrance to the village Antonio pointed out to us a little crippled man as the father of this Zantippe, we glanced at the diminutive little fellow with pitying eyes.
"He looks frightened," I said. "How often does his amiable daughter beat him?"