We kept the mules to as sharp a trot as was consistent with the work still before us. Unfortunately, in the jolting, poor Bridget's bundle got loose, and the contents being scattered on the road, the wardrobe of a Corsican girl was exposed to profane eyes, and it became incumbent on me, in discharge of my trust, to restore it to order with all possible neatness and security. Again we pricked on, and crossing the Gravone at the Ponte d'Usciano, the road began to ascend, carrying us for some miles over a rugged spur of the mountains. Here we found ourselves again among the shrubbery which forms so characteristic a feature in the landscape of these islands. Having passed the ruins of a house, the inmates of which, even to the infant in the cradle, had been butchered in one of the feuds so common in Corsica, we halted at a roadside albergo, near a baraque of the gendarmerie. Bread and grapes, with new wine, were spread for us under the shade of a tree, and we refreshed ourselves while our mules got their feed of barley.
We had now nearly a level road all the way to Ajaccio. The plain was well cultivated, and we remarked some irrigated fields of maize. Soon afterwards it became dark, and the mules being much distressed, we could only proceed at a slow pace. The fatigue of riding was much lessened by having an English saddle; still it was a hard day's travelling: but the air was deliciously balmy, and the glowworm's lamp and cricket's chirp helped to cheer the weariness of a road which seemed interminable. Presently, we met country people returning from the market at Ajaccio, lights were seen more frequently on the hills, and, at last, the lantern on the pier-head—a welcome beacon—came in view. Half an hour afterwards, we dismounted at an hotel on the Corso.
CHAP. XXII.
Ajaccio.—Collège-Fesch.—Reminiscences of the Buonaparte Family.—Excursion in the Gulf.—Chapel of the Greeks.—Evening Scenes.—Council-General of the Department.—Statistics.—State of Agriculture in Corsica—Her Prospects.
Sunday morning we attended high-mass at the cathedral of Ajaccio, a building of the sixteenth century, in the Italian style, having a belfry and dome, with the interior richly decorated. The service was well performed, there being a fine-toned organ, and the music of the mass well selected. The congregation was numerous, the girls' school especially. I was struck with the pensive cast of features in many of the girls, so like the Madonnas of the Italian masters. There were formerly six dioceses in Corsica, Mariana being the principal; for many years they have been all administered by the Bishop of Ajaccio, who is at present a suffragan of the Archbishop of Aix, in France.
After service, we called on one of the professors of the Collège-Fesch, to whom we had letters of introduction. This college and the Séminaire are the best buildings in Ajaccio, both being finely situated fronting the sea. The Séminaire is confined exclusively to the education of theological students intended for the clerical orders. In the other, founded and endowed by Cardinal Fesch, the course of study is that generally pursued in the French colleges. The cardinal appears to have had more affection for his native place than any other member of the Bonaparte family, giving a proof of it in this noble foundation. He also bequeathed to his native place a large collection of pictures, few of them, however, of much merit. His remains are deposited with those of Madame Letizia, his sister, in a chapel of the cathedral of Ajaccio, having been brought from Rome; where I recollect seeing him in 1819,—short and portly in person, with a mild and good-humoured expression of countenance. He had been a kind guardian of the young Bonapartes, and carefully administered the small property they inherited.
The Collège-Fesch is a large building, with spacious lecture-rooms, long and lofty corridors, and a yard for exercise; the windows of the front looking out on the Gulf of Ajaccio and the mountains beyond. The professor's apartments had all the air of the rooms of a college fellow and tutor in one of our universities, carpets et aliis mutandis; only they were more airy and spacious. There are fifteen professors, of whom the Abbate Porazzi is one of the most distinguished. We were indebted to him for many good offices during our stay at Ajaccio. The number of students at this time was 260. They appeared to be of all ranks and ages; some of them grown men.
Everything here has the southern character. We find rows of lemon-trees on the Corso; and the cactus, or Indian fig, flourishes in the environs,—the bright oleander thriving in the open air. The heat was excessive, my thermometer standing at 80° at noon, in the shade of an airy room. From the Corso, a short street leads into the market-place, a square, bounded on one side by the port, and embellished by a fountain. During the last year it has been further ornamented by a statue of the first Napoleon, of white marble, standing on a granite pedestal, and facing the harbour. Concealed during the reigns of the restored Bourbons, its erection was a homage to the rising fortunes of the President of the French Republic. Ajaccio, being the modern capital of Corsica, the chef-lieu of the department, and seat of the préfetture and administration, is more French in habits and feeling than any other town in the island. But even here, I apprehend, there has never been much enthusiasm for the Bonapartes.[34] Among the native Corsicans, Pascal Paoli is the national hero.
We visited, of course, the house in which the first Napoleon was born, standing in a little solitary court dignified with the name of the Piazza Lucrezia, near the market-place. It has been often described. Uninhabited, and without a vestige of furniture, except some faded tapestry on the walls, the desolate and gloomy air of the birthplace of the great emperor struck me even more than the deserted apartments at Longwood, from which his spirit took its flight. There, sheaves of corn and implements of husbandry still gave signs of human life, singularly as they contrasted with the relics of imperial grandeur recently witnessed by the homely apartments. A man, born in the first year of the French Revolution, and who has followed the career of its “child and champion” with the feelings common to most Englishmen, can have no Napoleonic sympathies; yet, without forgetting the atrocities, the selfishness, and the littleness which stained and disfigured that career, it is impossible that such scenes could be contemplated by a thoughtful mind, not only without profound reflection on the vicissitudes of life, but without a full impression of the genius and force of character which lifted the Corsican adventurer to the dangerous height from whence he fell.