Paoli

“ Paoli was very desirous that I should study the character of the Corsicans. "Go among them," said he, "the more you talk with them, you will do me the greater pleasure. Forget the meanness of their apparel. Hear their sentiments. You will find honour, and sense, and abilities among these poor men."
His heart grew big when he spoke of his countrymen. ”

“ The conspiratour from schemes of ruin and destruction to Rome; the patriot from schemes of liberty and felicity to Corsica.
Paoli told me that the vivacity of his mind was such, that he could not study above ten minutes at a time. "La testa mi rompa. My head is like to break," said he. "I can never write my lively ideas with my own hand. In writing, they escape from my mind. ”

“ Paoli proposed Pozzo di Borgo as president of the council. When the latter was presented to Admiral Elliott he gazed upon his swarthy complexion, his sparkling eyes, and meagre and active figure, and asked Paoli whether that was the person he proposed placing at the head of the government. "I can answer for him," said Paoli; "he is a young man as well fitted for the government of a nation as he is capable of leading his countrymen unflinchingly on the field of battle. ”

“ Even this clown, this fool Paoli, will change the tone of his song, ere long! Ere long!!”
Paoli took his chief’s words pleasantly. “Hold on!” he cried. “Don’t you know that they have an adage among the French: ‘Never hit a man when he is down’?” As he said this, he arose:
“I am, as you well know, a descendant of the great Paoli, at whose name all Corsica thrilled, a just man, and the most distinguished general in the world.”
“It is a great pity,” said Cromillian, sarcastically, “that he is not living, and here to give advice to his kinsman. ”

“ The Convention summoned him to appear before its bar and answer the accusations, and sent Saliceti, Lacombe, and Delcher, as commissaries to the island. Paoli, however, refused to obey the decree, and sent a dignified and firm address to the Convention, in which he repelled the imputations made upon him, and complained of their forcing a judicial investigation upon an aged man, and a martyr for freedom. Was a Paoli to stand in a court composed of windy declaimers and play-actors, and then lay his head, grown gray in heroism, beneath the knife of the guillotine? ”

“ Perhaps the best known of all the Corsican heroes is the last upon the national roll, Pascal Paoli. He is certainly the most popular in his native land, where he is affectionately called the “Father of the People.” In many an out-of-the-way village, in many a lonely mountain inn, his portrait hangs upon the wall, where it is always regarded with respect. Paoli was born at the hamlet of Stretta in 1726. His father’s house was a mere cottage of the usual ugly and uncomfortable pattern. When the boy was twelve years old, his father was ordered by the Genoese to leave the island. ”

“ Paoli made every effort to induce the young Bonapartes to join his standard; but they, believing that popular rights would yet come out triumphant, resolutely refused. The peasantry of Corsica, unenlightened, and confiding in General Paoli, to whom they were enthusiastically attached, eagerly rallied around his banner. England was the soul of the coalition now formed against popular rights in France. Paoli, in loyalty to the Bourbons, and in treason to the French people, surrendered the island of Corsica to the British fleet. ”

“ To most of them, who continually saw our ministers appear and disappear, and who each time they came received the homage of new personages, M. Paoli personified the Republic which, with whatever petty quarrels and changes of officials, was always calm and smiling to its guests in the drawing-room. France, indeed, profited by the precious friendship which M. Paoli won for himself. "He is a model functionary, he has made the Republic beloved by Kings," exclaimed M. Félix Faure one day in my presence. And I remember another striking reflection of the regretted President. ”

“ But I cannot allow myself to suppose that Paoli ever required the aid of pious frauds.
Paoli, though never familiar, has the most perfect ease of behaviour. This is a mark of a real great character. The distance and reserve which some of our modern nobility affect is, because nobility is now little else than a name in comparison of what it was in ancient times. In ancient times, noblemen lived at their country seats, like princes, in hospitable grandeur. They were men of power, and every one of them could bring hundreds of followers into the field. ”

“ He honoured me with a kindly friendship, notwithstanding the fact that he used to reproach me, in his jesting way, with becoming too much of a reactionary from my contact with the monarchs of Europe and that I once took his breath away by telling him that I had dined with the Empress Eugénie at Cap Martin.
"A republican official at the Empress's table!" he cried. "You're the only man, my dear Paoli, who would dare to do such a thing. And you're the only one," he added, slily, "in whom we would stand it!" ”

“ If it is true, it is a remarkable trait in the character of the great man, and at least a proof that human weakness everywhere asserts its sway, and that no mortal is safe from the moment when he may be overcome by vanity and outside show. Paoli and a throne—there can hardly be a greater contradiction. Liberty and the Corsican people were the noble man's loftiest throne, and no potentate ever occupied one more glorious than that plain arm-chair on which Paoli sat, the legislator and deliverer of a people. ”

“ Five months later, Alfonso XIII, returning from Germany, where he had been to pay his accession-visit to the Berlin Court, stopped to spend a day incognito in Paris. I found him as I had left him; gay, enthusiastic, full of good-nature, glad to be alive.
"Here I am again, my dear M. Paoli," he said, when he perceived me at the frontier, where, according to custom, I had gone to meet him. "But this time I shall not cause you any great worry. I must go home and I sha'n't stop for more than twenty-four hours—worse luck!—in Paris." ”

“ I know not whether it is an adage, but it is a well-known fact that the sons and grandsons of great men seldom resemble them.{108}”
“Your wits are too much for me,” said Paoli, “but please have the grace to hear me out. It was a maxim of my illustrious ancestor that every citizen should constitute himself a soldier and defend his rights by force of arms. Not to avenge wrongs committed against one’s own blood or that of his friends, has always been deemed by the Corsicans to denote a coward. I am a true son of Corsica and, for that, you call me a clown, a fool. ”

“ This was by no means the scheme. Paoli was too able a man to submit the legislation of his country to one who was an entire stranger to the people, the manners, and in short to every thing in the island. Nay, I know well that Paoli pays more regard to what has been tried by the experience of ages than to the most beautiful ideal systems. ”

“ I received many civilities from the Abbé Rostini, a man of literature, and distinguished no less for the excellency of his heart. His saying of Paoli deserves to be remembered. "Nous ne craignons pas que notre General nous trompe ni qu'il se laisse tromper. We are not afraid that our General will deceive us, nor that he will let himself be deceived." ”

“ Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded the physical power while he himself should have become a Lycurgus, Paoli's wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus clearing the ground for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli's own just and wise conceptions of legislation. ”

“ Then, taking a white rose from the bouquet with which the Mayor of Biarritz had presented her, she gave it to the princess, who pressed it to her lips before pinning it to her bodice.
That same evening, the King, beaming all over his face, cried to me from a distance, the moment he saw me:
[Pg 66]
"It's all right, Paoli; the official demand has been granted. You see before you the happiest of men!"
He was indeed happy, so much so that his gaiety infected everybody around him. Each of us felt that he had some small part in this frank happiness, in this touching romance ”

“ Paoli has a memory like that of Themistocles; for I was assured that he knows the names of almost all the people in the island, their characters, and their connections. His memory as a man of learning, is no less uncommon. He has the best part of the classicks by heart, and he has a happy talent in applying them with propriety, which is rarely to be found. This talent is not always to be reckoned pedantry. The instances in which Paoli is shewn to display it, are a proof to the contrary. ”

“ The dispositions of the Corsicans are changeable." Yet after ten years, their attachment to Paoli is as strong as at the first. Nay, they have an enthusiastick admiration of him. "Questo grand' uomo mandato per Dio a liberare la patria. This great man whom God hath sent to free our country," was the manner in which they expressed themselves to me concerning him.
Those who attended on Paoli were all men of sense and abilities in their different departments. ”

“ The overwhelming force brought over by the Count de Vaux early in 1769 soon dispersed the Corsican levies, and rendered all further resistance on the part of Paoli perfectly vain. Paoli was much respected in England by men of all parties. At the commencement of the Revolution he was invited to France, and after an enthusiastic reception by the National Assembly, placed in the command of Corsica, with the rank of Lieutenant-General of the Island. The troubles that followed led him to offer the Crown to England in 1793 ”

“ We have set up a locanda here for the season at the wells, and have made very little by it."
As I looked at his pale face—he had caught fever at Aleria—I felt touched.
We sat down together, Magyar, Lombard, Corsican, and German, and talked of old times, and named many names of modern celebrity or notoriety. How silent many of these become before the one great name, Paoli! I dare not mention them beside him; the noble citizen, the man of intellect and action, will not endure their company. ”

“ Paoli, the president of the Consulta, was located at Corte; the messengers of the Convention gathered in Bastia the adherents of France, and excited them to strenuous efforts against the rebellious Consulta and the insurgent Paoli. Civil war with all its horrors was there; the raging conflicts of the parties tore apart the holy bonds of family, friendship, and love. Brother fought and argued against brother, friend rose up against friend, and whole families were destroyed, rent asunder by the impassioned rivalries of sentiment and partisanship. ”

“ Psychology makes answer that motives must be sought in the origin, the early experience and subsequent career of the personality with whom we are concerned.
Like the great Napoleon, for whom he has always felt a touching adoration, M. Paoli is a Corsican. He was born in 1835 at La Porta, a picturesque little town perched like an eagle's nest on the crest of a hill on the eastern slope of the island, overlooking the sea, with the Island of Elba and the coast of Tuscany in the distance. ”

“ It was perhaps an error that Paoli did not recognize the indissoluble bonds of race and speech as powerfully drawing Corsica to Italy, disregard the leanings of the democratic mountaineers toward France, sympathize with the fondness of the towns for the motherland, and so use his influence as to confirm the natural alliance between the insular Italians and those of the peninsula. When we regard Sardinia, however, time seems to have justified him. ”

“ But this idea appeared like the ideas we are taught in the schools to form of things which may exist, but do not; of seas of milk, and ships of amber. But I saw my highest idea realised in Paoli. It was impossible for me, speculate as I pleased, to have a little opinion of human nature in him.
One morning, I remember, I came in upon him without ceremony, while he was dressing. I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing him in those teasing moments, when, according to the Duke of Rochefoucault, no man is a hero to his valet de chambre. ”

“ Paoli, who upon the conquest of Corsica had fled to England, was afterward permitted to return 296 to his native island. Napoleon, though in years but a boy, was, in mind a full-grown man. He sought the acquaintance of Paoli, and they became intimate friends. The veteran general and the manly boy took many excursions together over the island; and Paoli pointed out to his intensely-interested companion, the fields where sanguinary battles had been fought, and the positions which the little army of Corsicans had occupied in the struggle for independence. ”

“ When the nation, assembled in San Antonio della Casabianca, had declared Pasquale Paoli its sole General, he at first declined the honour, pleading his youth and inexperience; but the people would not even give him a colleague. On the 15th of July 1755, Pasquale Paoli placed himself at the helm of his country.
He found his country in this condition: the Genoese, confined to their fortified towns, making preparations for war; the greater part of the island free; the people grown savage, torn by faction and family feud; the laws obsolete; agriculture, trade, science, neglected or non-existent ”

“ For I would not have my countrymen even suspect that I could be one moment unfaithful." And he remained in his dungeon. Paoli went on: "I defy Rome, Sparta or Thebes to shew me thirty years of such patriotism as Corsica can boast. Though the affection between relations is exceedingly strong in the Corsicans, they will give up their nearest relations for the good of their country, and sacrifice such as have deserted to the Genoese."
He gave me a noble instance of a Corsican's feeling and greatness of mind. "A criminal," said he, "was condemned to die. ”