CHAP. IX.
Environs of Olmeta.—Bandit-Life and the Vendetta—Its Atrocities.—The Population disarmed.—The Bandits exterminated.
OLMETA.
Olmeta stands, like most Corsican villages, on the point of a hill, forming one side of an oval basin, the slopes of which are laid out in terraced gardens and vineyards. Here and there, in sheltered nooks, we find plantations of orange-trees, now showing green fruit under their glossy leaves. Some fine chestnut and walnut trees about the place, and the magnificent elms (olme) from which it derives its name, soften the aspect of its bleak, exposed site, and gaunt houses.
Charming as the natural landscapes are in Corsica, one finds most of the villages, however picturesque at a distance, on a nearer approach, a conglomeration of tall, shapeless houses, black and frowning, with windows guarded by rusty iron grilles, and generally unglazed. Altogether, they look more like the holds of banditti than the abodes of peaceful vinedressers; while the filth of the purlieus is unutterable. Throwing open the double casements of the widow's sanctum, I may not call it boudoir, when I leapt out of bed to enjoy the fresh morning air,—underneath was a noisome dunghill, grim gables frowned on either hand, but beyond was the riant landscape just described. Here truly God made the country, man the town.
While my friend was sketching, I strolled up to the pretty church we had seen by moonlight. Close by is a large, roomy mansion, which belonged to Marshal Sebastiani. He was a native of Olmeta, and, from an obscure origin, arriving at high rank as well as great wealth, partly, I understood, through a brilliant marriage, bought a large property in the neighbourhood, which has been recently sold for 150,000 francs to a French Directeur. I went over the château: to the original mansion the marshal had added a handsome salle, and a lofty tower commanding varied and extensive views towards Fiorenzo and the Mediterranean. My conductor was a gentleman of Olmeta, who accidentally meeting me, proffered his services, pressing me afterwards to take breakfast with him. We had done very well at the widow's long before, with delicious bread, eggs, apples, and figs, and coffee in the smallest of cups. We brewed our own tea in a bran-new coffee-pot, purchased for that purpose at Bastia. Butter and milk were wanting, but whipped eggs make a very tolerable substitute for the latter.
My new acquaintance informed me that the decree, passed the year before for disarming the whole population, combined with measures for increasing the force of the gendarmerie, and making it highly penal to harbour the bandits or afford them any succour, had been actively and rigorously carried out, and were completely successful. The life of a citizen is as safe in Corsica as in any other department of France. “You may walk through the island,” added my informant, “with a purse of gold in your bosom.”
This was true, I imagine, with regard to strangers, in the worst of times; their security from molestation being nearly allied to the national virtue of hospitality, which is not quite extinct. Nor were the Corsican banditti associated, like those of Italy, for the mere purpose of plunder, though they have heavily taxed the peaceable inhabitants, both by drawing from the poor the means for their subsistence in the woods and mountains, and by levying, under terror, direct contributions in money from the more wealthy inhabitants in the towns and villages. These are, however, but trifling ingredients in the mass of crime for which Corsica has been so painfully distinguished. Would, indeed, that robbery and pillage were the sins of the darkest dye which have to be laid to the account of the Corsican bandit! Most commonly, his hands have been stained with innocent blood, shed recklessly, relentlessly, in private quarrels, often of the most frivolous description, and not in open fight, as in the feuds of the middle ages, not in the heat of sudden passion, but by cool, premeditated murder.