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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He took his gun, and ranged the hills to find Dezio; and, as he could not come upon his traces, though he lay night and day among the rocks, he took service with the Genoese, who formed the watch in the Tower of Padulella, thinking, that with their help, he might perhaps surprise his foe.
Dezio, meanwhile, lived with the fox, the deer, and the wild sheep, and roamed about in desert fastnesses, every night seeking a new shelter, ever wandering, and ever bearing with him in his heart sadness and alarm. One day he escaped in a ship with sailors, who were his friends, to Genoa. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dezio! rise, and stand to thy weapon!"
The sleeper leapt to his feet, and caught up his gun.
"I could have murdered thee sleeping," said Luigione to 207 him; "but it would have been the deed of a villain. Now defend thyself, for my father's blood cries for revenge!"
Dezio, shocked to death, gazed for one moment on the terrible man, then he hurled his gun far into the bushes, tore pistol and dagger from his belt, and flung them both away, and, baring his breast, cried—
"Luigione, shoot, and avenge thy father! Then I shall have rest in my grave! Kill me!" ”

“ On a rock near the place are still visible the ruins of Castle Giglio, where Sampiero spent the night before his death. I looked around in vain for some memorial which might inform the wanderer that in this gloomy spot the most heroic of all Corsicans met his fate. This, too, is a characteristic trait of the Corsican nation; the living memory of the people is the only monument of their wild tragic history. ”

“ 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 country between it and the Tavignano is said to be the most fertile in Corsica.
As the evening approached, the temperature changed with striking rapidity, from the most sultry heat to a moist and foggy chillness. In many parts the atmosphere was laden with miasma. I stumbled on a gravestone by the roadside. It seemed erected in this solitude to indicate a memorable spot. It was the monument of a road-contractor whom a paesane shot, because he had an amour with a maiden whose suitor the latter was. Nothing enchains the interest of men so powerfully as the romance of the heart. ”

“ Every rock in the island is a memorial stone; and the Corsicans may well dispense with monumental pillars and tablets, so long as the great events of their history continue to form a living element of their own being. For, when a people begin to decorate their land with statues and with monuments, it is a sure sign that their primeval power is gone. The whole of Italy is at present a mere museum of monuments, statues, and inscriptions; while in Corsica, nature continues to reign, and living tradition has lost none of its power. ”

“ The poor citizens had not a moment's rest; and, quite exhausted by continual exertion, were wasting away with hunger, wounds, and daily and nightly watching. No day passed without burial of the dead; death stood before every eye, and day and night the sound of lamentation was heard. Meanwhile the necessity had become so great, that they were compelled to eat disgusting weeds; and how long were they still to wait for aid from Genoa? The power of endurance which the people of Bonifazio exhibited under hunger and privations the most severe, almost exceeds human conception. ”

“ An iron hand has maintained its grasp upon the past—upon the old popular customs—the dirges of the Etruscans, the family feuds of the Middle Ages, the barbarism of the Vendetta, the ancient, simple modes of life, and the ancient heroism; and as the people live in cities that have become gray in ruin, they live socially, in a state that, for the cultivated nations, is hoary tradition.
In the principal church of Calvi, whose Moorish cupola is pierced by the balls of the English, they show the tomb of a family that bears the dearest, the most precious of all names—the name Libertà—Freedom! ”

“ At a later period, the Bonifazians built the Church of San Francesco in honour of the saint. Hard by, there stood on the rock in olden times a grove of pines, myrtle, and box-wood—a truly miraculous growth, as it rested on the bare limestone rock. It was forbidden to fell a tree there on pain of losing the right hand. Holy men of the bush, anchorites, sat there in a mountain hermitage, worshipping God and singing pious hymns, high above the strait, near to heaven. ”

“ This gentleman accurately quoted Rousseau's prediction on Corsica, which it is impossible to escape hearing when in conversation with educated Corsicans.
The strait becomes more and more beautiful as the sun-set light begins to fall upon it. Sailing-boats flit past, breasting the waves; they pass into the distance with the golden gleam of the setting sun upon them; isolated rocks tower darkly out of the water, and the mountains of Sardinia are tinged with violet. ”

“ The sun is setting; it throws its splendours on the gulf, and the rocky hills of Calenzana are all a-glow. How magical is this southern haze of distance, and how delicate the tones of the colouring! All transition has a profound effect upon the human soul. On the boundary line where the transition is made from Being to non-existence, or from non-existence to Being, lies the fairest and deepest poesy of life. ”

“ Paoli's dream was to play the Solon, but he copied his model badly. He had put everything into the hands of the people, or its representatives, so that one could not exist except at its pleasure. Strange mistake, to subordinate to a day-labourer, a man who by education, birth, and fortune, is destined to rule! Such a palpable perversion of reason cannot fail, in the long-run, to produce the ruin and dissolution of the body politic, after it has brought it into uproar by every species of abuse. ”

“ Farther to the north-west I had before me the famous pastoral highlands of Niolo, the most elevated basin of the island, with its black lake Nino, from which the Tavignano flows.
These diminutive lakes are all of great depth, and swarming with trout.
As you stand on the summit you hear a continual sound of rushing waters; part of them are forcing their way under ground. This rigid, blasted wilderness, we perceive, overflows with living fountains, which descend to bless the valleys, and there make culture and human society possible ”

“ Belgodere might be a sanctuary of Pallas, it lies embosomed in such luxuriant groves of her favourite tree.
It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where the olive attains such a size as it does in the Balagna. The thickness of its stem, its abundance of branches, and the quantity of fruit it produces, are equally astonishing. It is mighty as a beech, and in the heat of noon you rest cool under its shelter. The olive is a tree that one cannot but love. ”

“ This is a place where one may well be a child among children. The sense of remoteness and seclusion one has here, on the shore and in the woods, soothes and strengthens. The little town lies still as a dream. The little flat-roofed houses with their green jalousies, the two snow-white towers of the little church—everything has a miniature look, and an air of privacy and retirement. In the sea stand the three red cliffs; an ancient tower keeps watch over them, and tells in the silent evening old stories of the Saracens ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is in time an invisible influence for evil, which gradually stains all that is pure, dwarfs all that is great, debases all that is noble. In this world of ours, it is so and not otherwise; exalted virtue is a phenomenon confined to the period of struggle towards a great aim. In Corsica it has often made me sad to think, that all those heroic exertions of its people, all those battles for freedom, have proved fruitless; and that now, in the land of Sampiero, of Gaffori, and of Paoli, "the vain nation" bears rule. ”

“ He remained in banishment; Napoleon did not recall him, perhaps because he feared to excite the jealousy of the French.
In the days of his prosperity, Bonaparte forgot his little fatherland; thankless and weak, like all parvenus, who are unwilling to be reminded of the obscure spot that gave them birth. He did nothing for the poor island, and the Corsicans have not been able to forget this. They still remember that the Emperor, when a Corsican once presented himself to him, drily asked him: "Well, how is it in Corsica; are the Corsicans always murdering each other yet?" ”

“ He never afterwards visited his native island; but fate one day gave him a sight of it, when, a defeated man, whom history had laid aside as no longer available for its aims, he stood upon the narrow cliff of Elba. Then ironic destiny showed him the obscure corner from which, as a child of fortune, he had issued into the world to seek a career.
Later, on St. Helena, his thoughts constantly recurred to Corsica. People on their deathbeds usually wander back in imagination through the course of their lives, and dwell with greatest pleasure on their childhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He dares to call himself a representative of the nation, he—who has sold it, and you suffer it! He dares to raise his eyes to listen to your discourses, and you suffer it! This the voice of the people!—he had but the votes of twelve aristocrats! This the voice of the people!—and Ajaccio, Bastia, and most of the cantons wreaked that upon his effigy which they would willingly have done upon his person. ”

“ But Ruggero fell upon his knees before his foe, and while he embraced his feet with sobs, begged his forgiveness, and God's.
"Rise, my friend Grimaldi," said Orso Paolo; "may God so to-day forgive us both, as we forgive each other; and here, before the people of Olmo, swear eternal friendship."
The foes sank into each other's arms, and the people shouted exultingly: Evviva, Orso Paolo!
Antonio soon recovered from his wound; and gay were the festivities of that evening in the village of Monte d'Olmo, when the Grimaldi and the Vincenti celebrated their solemn feast of reconciliation. ”

“ Want of room compelled the Bonifazians to carry their houses to a great height. The stairs are uncommonly steep, on account of the want of depth in the buildings. On many houses I saw the arms of Genoa still carved—a crowned lion-rampant holding a ring in its claw. The old emblem awakes proud memories, like the name of Doria, which still exists in Bonifazio under the form of D'Oria. For this is the proper name of those famous Genoese lords of the great family of Oria. ”

“ They burst into the citadel of Marseilles, and, with his own hand, Piero Libertà sent a lance through the throat of the consul Casaux. When he had either slain or disarmed all the guards, he shut the doors of the castle, and, with the bloody sword in his hand, he ran through the city, shouting, "Libertà! Libertà!" The people rose at his call, ran to arms, stormed the towers and fortifications of Marseilles, and freed the city. ”

“ Most of the women wore black veils, those of the middle classes were enveloped in the black faldetta. It was easy to imagine you were in some city of Spain.
The Ajaccians have the finest promenades in the world, whether they choose the beautiful esplanade which has so romantic a name, or the walks along the gulf among alleys of elms, and through vineyards and olive-gardens. I know few promenades from which so fine a view is to be had as that from the quiet Place du Diamant in Ajaccio. Immediately in front of it the murmuring sea; towards the land cheerful rows of houses ”