“That is your scheme of life?” she asked bitterly.
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
She rose and turned angrily away.
“Then it is France you care for—if it is no one in Corsica. France—nothing and nobody—but France.”
And she left him.
CHAPTER XXII. IN THE MACQUIS
“Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.”
The Abbé Susini had no money, but he was a charitable man in a hasty and impulsive way. Even the very poor may be charitable: they can think kindly of the rich. It was not the rich of whom the abbé had a friendly thought, but the foolish and the stubborn. For this fiery little priest knew more of the unwritten history of the macquis than any in Corsica—infinitely more than those whose business it was.