Ferdinand Gregorovius

“ No marble tablet tells the stranger who has come from Italy, where the houses of great men always bear inscriptions, that he stands before the house of the Bonapartes. He knocks in vain at the door; no voice answers, and all the windows are closely veiled with gray jalousies, as if the house were in a state of siege from the Vendetta. Not a human being is stirring upon the square; a deathlike stillness rests upon the neighbourhood, as if the name of Napoleon had frightened it into silence, or scared all else away. ”

“ It is impossible for a man to be more loved and honoured by a whole nation after his death than Pasquale Paoli; and if posthumous fame is a second life, then Corsica's and Italy's greatest man of the eighteenth century lives a thousandfold—yes, lives in every Corsican heart, from the tottering graybeard who knew him in his youth, to the child on whose soul his high example is impressed. No greater name can be given to a man than "Father of his country." ”

“ When Lucretia saw how small and unimportant was her little kingdom, she must have felt that she did not rank with the women of Urbino, Ferrara, and Mantua, or with those of Milan and Bologna; but she, by the authority of the Pope, her own father, had become an independent princess, and, although her territory embraced only a few square miles, to Italy it was a costly bit of ground.
Pesaro lies free and exposed in a wide valley. A chain of green hills sweeps half around it like the seats in a theater, and the sea forms the stage. ”

“ Regarding condolence, I can only say to you, as you yourself must have thought, that time soothes and lessens all our griefs. So high is my opinion of your intelligence and so numerous the proofs of your strength of character that I know that you will find consolation, and will not grieve too long. For, although you have now lost your father, who was so great that Fortune herself could not have given you a greater one, this is not the first blow which you have received from an evil and hostile destiny. You have suffered so much before that your soul must now be inured to misfortune. ”

“ If this island of Corsica could again give forth all the blood which in the course of centuries has been shed upon it—the blood of those who have fallen in battle, and the blood of those who have fallen in the Vendetta—the red deluge would inundate its cities and villages, and drown its people, and crimson the sea from the Corsican shore to Genoa. Verily, violent death has here his peculiar realm. ”

“ The silence invites memory and thought, and silently the mirror of the blue gulf stretches away before the view. You see it from almost every street. The eye is nowhere imprisoned by walls, for the main streets are wide, the squares spacious, planted with green trees; and the sea, and green olive-clad hills, which rise close upon the city, look in upon you wherever you go or stand. Ajaccio is at once an inland and a coast town—you live there in the heart of Nature. ”

“ The symbolism of trees is a significant indication of the unity of man and nature, which he constantly draws into the sphere of his emotions, to share in them, or to interpret them. The fir, the laurel, the oak, the olive, the palm, have all their higher meaning, and are poetical language.
I saw few cypresses in Corsica, and these of no great size; and yet such a tree would be in its place in this Island of Death. But the tree of peace grows here on every hand; the war-goddess Minerva, to whom the olive is sacred, is also the goddess of peace. ”

“ Never, even in the later years of her life, does she appear as a woman of unusual genius; she had none of the characteristics of the viragos Catarina Sforza and Ginevra Bentivoglio; nor did she possess the deceitful soul of an Isotta da Rimini, or the spirituelle genius of Isabella Gonzaga. If she had not been the daughter of Alexander VI and the sister of Cæsar Borgia, she would have been unnoticed by the historians of her age or, at most, would have been mentioned only as one of the many charming women who constituted the society of Rome. ”

“ About eight o'clock in the morning I set out from Sartene to Bonifazio, the most southerly town and fortress in Corsica. The road lay along a desolate coast, the hills sloping gradually towards the sea-shore. There is not a village to be seen all the way; and I should have perished from hunger and thirst, had not my travelling companions taken care to furnish themselves with bread and wine before setting out. Who not his bread with joy has eaten, by olive gray or vine-tree seated, He knows you not, ye heavenly powers! ”

“ For even a noble nature can here become a Cain, and they who wander as bandits on the hills of this island, are often bearers of the curse of barbarous custom, and not of their own vileness, and may be men of virtues that would honour and signalize them in the peaceable life of a civil community.
A single passion, sprung from noble source—revenge, and nothing but revenge! it is wonderful with what irresistible might it seizes on a man. Revenge is, for the poor Corsicans, the dread goddess of Fate, who makes their history. ”

“ Your fellow-citizens, who abhor you, will enlighten France as to your true character. The estates and the pensions, the fruit of your treasons, will be taken from you. Bowed down by age and misery, in the horrible solitude of crime, you will live long enough to be tormented by your conscience. The father will point you out to his son, the teacher to his scholar, and say: "Children, learn to honour your country, virtue, fidelity, and humanity.'
"And she, whose youth, beauty, and innocence they prostitute—her pure and chaste heart trembles under the touch of a polluted hand? ”

“ The Duke presented the young couple Castle Vecchio for their residence, and there Lucretia established her court. This stronghold, which is still in existence, is one of the most imposing monuments of the Middle Ages. It overlooks all Ferrara, and may be seen for miles around. Its dark red color; its gloominess, which is partly due to its architectural severity; its four mighty towers—all combine to cause a feeling of fear, especially on moonlight nights, when the shadows of the towers fall on the water in the moat, which still surrounds the castle as in days of old. ”

“ These Corsican women have as yet no notion of the arts and sciences; they read no romances, they play the cithern in the twilight, and sing a melancholy vocero—a beautiful dirge, which, perhaps, they themselves improvise. But in the little circle of their ideas and feelings, their nature remains vigorous and healthy as the nature that environs them—chaste, and pious, and self-balanced, capable of all noble sacrifice, and such heroic resolves, as the poetry of civilisation preserves to all time as the highest examples of human magnanimity.
Antigone and Iphigenia can be matched in Corsica. ”

“ The country rises gradually from the shore into a rugged mountainous region, covered with huge boulders. Rocks, low brush-wood, the sand upon the shore, and a dead marsh, combine to render this part of the island peculiarly wild and bleak. The evergreen oak, however, and the cork-tree, grow here in great numbers; and the rugged soil brings forth corn and wine. At last Sartene met my view, stretching before me—a wide-extended paese—in melancholy isolation, among melancholy rocks and mountains. ”

“ She had seen him once in Rome, in her early youth, when she was Sforza's betrothed. No sacrifice would be too great for her if it would wipe out the remembrance of the nine years which had followed that day. The victory she had now won by the shameful complaisance of the house of Este was associated with deep humiliation, for she knew that Alfonso had condescended to accept her hand only after long urging and under threats. A bold, intriguing woman might overcome this feeling of humiliation by summoning up the consciousness of her genius and her charm ”

“ If we could take a man such as our civilization now produces and transfer him into the Renaissance, the daily brutality which made no impression whatever on the men of that age would shatter his nervous system and probably upset his reason.
Lucretia Borgia lived in Rome surrounded by these passions, and she was neither better nor worse than the women of her time. She was thoughtless and was filled with the joy of living. We do not know that she ever went through any moral struggles or whether she ever found herself in conscious conflict with the actualities of her life and of her environment. ”

“ The west of Corsica is romantic, picturesque, grand; the east smooth, monotonous, melancholy. The eye here sweeps over leagues of level country, seeking for villages, men, life, and discovers nothing but heaths, 251 dotted here and there with clumps of wild bushes, and covered with morasses and ponds, extending far along the shore and the land with gloom.
The good and always level road leads us next from Porto Vecchio to the ancient Aleria—a day's journey. The grass grows on it a foot high. In summer, the people fear to travel over it. Along the whole road I met not a living soul. ”

“ And now I touched, for the first time, the soil of Corsica—an island which had attracted me powerfully even in my childhood, when I saw it on the map. When we first enter a foreign country, particularly if we enter it during the night, which veils everything in a mysterious obscurity, a strange expectancy, a burden of vague suspense, fills the mind, and our first impressions influence us for days. ”

“ These poor people have so little of all that makes life varied and agreeable—no drama, no society, no horses, carriages, or music—not even a newspaper, except at wide intervals. Many here, are born and step into their limy graves, without having seen even Ajaccio. They live here perched high up in the air on their dry rock, and have nothing but the air and the light, and that one grand view over the strait to the Sardinian hills. One may guess, therefore, what a holiday is likely to be in Bonifazio. ”

“ A voyage on this basin of the Mediterranean is in reality a voyage through History itself. In thought, I saw these fair seas populous with the fleets of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, with the ships of those Phocæans, whose roving bands were once busy here;—then Hasdrubal, and the fleets of the Carthaginians, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Moors, and the Spaniards, the Pisans, and the Genoese. But still more impressively are we reminded, by the constant sight of Corsica and Elba, of the greatest drama the world's history has presented in modern times—the drama which bears the name of Napoleon. ”

“ With a favourable wind, one could be in Sardinia in half an hour. The little lighthouse is surrounded by a white wall, and resembles a fort. The keeper received me kindly, and set before me a glass of goat's milk. He lives like Æolus, in the wind. There is something strange in the thought, that the long years of a man's life all turn round an oil-lamp, and that it is a human being's sole destiny to burn a lamp-wick on a lonely cliff by night. There can be nothing apparently more unsatisfactory, and nothing more unpretending than such an existence. ”

“ Sad were it for the noble Corsican people if they should one day exchange the virtues of their rude but great forefathers for the refined corruption of enervated Parisian society. The moral rottenness of society in France has robbed the French nation of its strength. It has stolen like an infection into society in other countries, deepened their demoralization, and made incapacity for action general. It has disturbed the hallowed foundation of all human society—the family relation. But a people is ripe for despotism that has lost the spirit of family. ”

“ They are all women who dance, wail, and sing. Like Mænads, the hair dishevelled and flying about the breast, eyes darting fire, their black mantles waving, they sway to and fro and round the tola, shriek, strike their hands together, beat their breasts, tear their hair, weep, sob, throw themselves on the bier, besprinkle themselves with dust; then the lament ceases, and these women sit silent, like a sisterhood of sibyls, on the floor of the chamber of death, breathing deeply, and calming themselves. ”

“ Our mountains should re-echo nothing but shouts of war. Let us show, by the vigour of our measures, that he is not all dead. Has he not left us the example of his life? The Fornari and the Vittoli cannot rob us of that. It has escaped their ambuscades and their treacherous balls. Why did he cry to his son, Save thyself? Doubtless that there might still remain a hero for our country, a head for our soldiers, a dreaded foe for the Genoese. Yes, countrymen, Sampiero has left to his murderers the stain of his death, and to the young Alfonso the duty of vengeance. ”

“ Nothing is heard but the deep breathing of those weird women cowering on the floor, wrapped in their mantles, the head 38 sunk upon the breast, expressing the deepest grief in the manner customary among the ancient Greeks, whose artists represent those overwhelmed with sorrow as covering the head and concealing the face. Nature herself has given the human being only two ways of indicating extreme suffering—the irrepressible outburst of feeling in the loud cry in which the whole vital energy seems to concentrate itself, and the profound silence in which the vital energies sink into stupor. ”

“ If no prince is found, who, moved by the narrative of our misfortunes, will listen to our complaints and protect us from our oppressors, there is still an Almighty God, and we stand armed in the name and for the defence of our country. Hasten to us, children of Corsica! whom exile keeps at a distance from our shores, to fight by the side of your brethren, to conquer or die! Let nothing hold you back—take your arms and come. Your country calls you, and offers you a grave and immortality!"
They came from Tuscany, from Rome, from Naples, from Marseilles. ”

“ This great man, hewn from the primeval granite of his country, is the perfect representative of the character of the island as of its history—rude valour, unconquerable obstinacy, a glowing love of freedom, patriotism, a penetrating sagacity, poverty without its wants, roughness and violent passion, volcanic emotions, thirst for revenge—leading him even like Othello to murder his wife ”