“Rest assured that we shall not attempt impossibilities,” replied Denise, gaily. “We only ask to be left alone to feed our poultry and attend to our garden. I am told that the house and servants are as my father's cousin left them, and we are expected to-day.”
“And you, colonel, shall be our protector,” added Mademoiselle Brun, with one of her straight looks.
The colonel laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and accompanied them to the carriage which awaited them.
“If one only knew whether you approve or disapprove of these hair-brained proceedings,” he took an opportunity of saying to Mademoiselle Brun, when Denise was out of earshot.
“If I only knew myself,” she replied coldly.
They climbed into the high, old-fashioned carriage, and drove through the new Boulevard du Palais, upward to the hills above the town. And if they observed the small crosses on either side of the road, marking the spot where some poor wight had come to what is here called an accidental death, they took care to make no mention of it. For Denise persisted in seeing everything in that rose light which illumines the world when we are young. She had even a good word to say for the Persévérance, which vessel had assuredly need of such, and said that the captain was a good French sailor, despite his grimy face.
“This,” she cried, “is better than your stuffy schoolroom!”
And she stood up in the carriage to inhale the breeze that hummed through the macquis from the cool mountain-tops. There is no air like that which comes as through a filter made of a hundred scented trees—a subtle mingling of their clean woody odours.
“Look!” she added, pointing down to the sea, which looked calm from this great height. “Look at that queer flat island there. That is Pianosa. And there is Elba. Elba! Cannot the magic of that word rouse you? But no, you have no Corsican blood in you; and you sit there with your uncompromising old face and your black bonnet a little bit on one side, if I may mention it”—and she proceeded to put Mademoiselle Brun's bonnet straight—“you, who are always in mourning for something—I don't know what,” she added half reflectively, as she sat down again.
The road to St. Florent mounts in a semi-circle behind Bastia through orange-groves and vineyards, and the tiny private burial-grounds so dear to Corsican families of position. These, indeed, are a proud people, for they are too good to await the last day in the company of their humbler brethren, but must needs have a small garden and a hideous little mausoleum of their own, with a fine view and easy access to the highroad.