Drunkards are undoubtedly to be found in Corsica, but apparently, a sense of the national dignity of demeanour remains even to them, and they do not shout and rave and misbehave like a Briton in drink.
As for the women of Corsica, they never join in the public promenades; and, unless it is in Bastia or Ajaccio, the rude laugh and loud voice of a bold girl seem unknown quantities.
It is a puzzling problem to guess how the Corsican young women ever get married, for courtship seems a rare thing, and you never meet a young couple walking out together in the cool of evening, through the flower-scented lanes.
Either matrimony is conducted in a very business-like fashion in the island, or the love-making is entirely confined to the house, and kept rigidly private.
CHAPTER XVII.
TO BASTIA FROM CORTE.
It was seven o'clock on a tremendously hot sunny morning when we started for our last day's journey, to Bastia. Our lofty banquette was shared by the driver, and was a veritable perch, ten or twelve feet from the ground, into which the only feasible way of climbing was by seizing hold of some ropes depending from the diligence top, and swinging oneself up, acrobat fashion.
A large group of gamins had assembled to witness our departure; and, notwithstanding the handsome rooms and clean accommodation with which Madame Pierracci had this time supplied us, we bade a last adieu to Corte without any sentiments but those of relief; and wound up the steep hills, through the blazing sunshine and pure morning air, with increasing exhilaration.
Our perch had its drawbacks.
We found that this diligence was altogether immensely inferior to the Ajaccio one, both in its steeds and its drivers. The horses were poor, stiff, worn-out brutes, that could scarcely get their exhausted limbs along, despite the incessant cracking of the long whip, and the discordant cries of their driver; and the men were all, without exception, the lowest specimens of Corsicans we had met with.
They were one and all good-natured, but dirty and unpleasant, and had no tongue save their own patois. Their tobacco was an alarming mixture, and their cries to their angular beasts astonishing, both in nature and in shrillness.