CHAPTER XIV.

A BANDIT VILLAGE.

Bocognano is, par excellence, the village of the bandits. It was formerly the home of the brothers Bella Coschia, the latest and most famous of the bandits of the present generation.

It is difficult to get at the truth regarding these two men, but there is little doubt that they have never had much to recommend them. Out of their own village they are generally admitted to have been regular ruffians; although, in Bocognano, they are declared to be most pleasing fellows.

There is a little shyness, however, in speaking of their errors, especially in this neighbourhood, which perhaps is not much to be wondered at, considering that sixty members of their family inhabit the village. The younger of the two brothers is only forty-two, and the elder one not more than fifty; but for some years these wild animals have shown signs of taming, and now lead a tolerably harmless and inoffensive life on the mountain side, where, by tacit consent, so long as they thus keep out of the way, they remain unmolested by the gendarmes.

A dark ravine on the blue flank of Monte D'Oro, a few miles above and beyond Bocognano, was pointed out to us as the almost inaccessible home of the two bandits.

Their native village receives from them the milk of their mountain goats, and supplies them with the necessaries of life.

By day, the men remain in their rocky stronghold; but at night they constantly descend the ravine and visit their friends and relations at Bocognano.

Night and day are the same to these wild, lawless climbers, who leap down the precipitous crags which separate their cavern dwelling from the village, with fearless security, in the darkest night.

A gentleman we afterwards met, who had been introduced, by special favour, to their stronghold, and appeared to have relished his call much, described them as well-educated men. They could both, he said, speak and read either French or Italian; and he had seen a letter written by one of them in the most idiomatic French. The younger brother, he asserted, became a bandit because of the conscription; preferring a roving and lawless life, and amateur skirmishes on his own account with the gendarmerie, to a forced service in the French army.

The Bella Coschias, however, were not of any particular rank amongst their fellow-villagers, although their name, like that of so many Corsicans, is one well known and a good one in Italy.

A driver whom we employed later on, and who was much more trustworthy than our French friend, afterwards told us more of the bandit brothers. On one occasion, one of them had made his way for some reason to Ajaccio, and our coachman drove him back by night in a close carriage to Bocognano--some twenty miles.

This was several years ago, when the man was undoubtedly a _mauvais sujet_, murdering and evil-doing in every direction, simply for the gratification of his own bad passions; and yet neither our driver, a remarkably superior, unprejudiced man, nor his master, a well-to-do coach owner, dreamt of doing otherwise than protecting the bandit from the French government.

It will be some time yet before law is recognized in Corsica, or the natives learn to give up, into its hands, their right of judgment regarding private feuds and local offenders.

After all, the excuse for this condition of things lies in the mal-administration of justice under which poor Corsica groaned for centuries, and which forced public opinion to take the law into its own hands, and regard the procedure of the courts as only a source of foreign oppression and complicated misfortune. The same cause probably has to answer for the vendetta, for so many years the curse of Corsica, and the disgrace of a noble people.

The vendetta has been the internal disease of the island, breaking out again and again, and often sapping the strength and destroying the harmony of the different members of the community.

It was the natural result of a hopelessly corrupt legislature among a warlike people of strong passions and revengeful propensities; and as such, must not be judged too hardly.

It is an incontrovertible fact that the law of the vendetta was, in its first action, not only allowed, but enforced, among the early Jews by the Mosaic dispensation.

The Corsicans (if we put aside the humanizing effect of Christianity) have had greater reason and excuse for their practice of private retribution than ever had the Jews; for the Jews had a court of unassailable purity presided over by the delegate of the Deity Himself, whilst the poor Corsican could hope for no verdict unbought by gold, or uninfluenced by party spirit, and could bring down no judgment on the head of assassin or robber, save that meted out by the wrathful strength of his own right hand. But a custom which began not unreasonably, and with so much excuse, spread until it became a monstrous horror in the land.

Men were not content with the pursuit and death of the murderer or the robber only--his whole family became their lawful prey; and, in return, every member of that family sought to shed the blood of their pursuers.

Children, before they were born, were doomed to the same unrelenting life of savage hate and bloodshed; and boys of tender years were brought by the mothers that bare them, before the bloody corpse of their father, and made to swear, with baby lips, undying vengeance and murderous retribution, so soon as their hands should be strong enough to grasp a gun, and their skill sufficient to point it home to the heart of the foe.

Thus the hand of every man was against his neighbour; and this not for serious causes only. Soon, the vendetta between different families began to arise from the most trivial causes. A man spoke slightingly of another man's friend or relative, or, maybe, his dog--a dispute occurred as to a date, a measurement, the opinions of a third. A hot word was spoken: out came the ready dagger, or the ever-loaded gun or pistol,--a human heart ceased beating, and a murderer fled to the maquis on the mountain side, or the caverns on the lonely rocks, and became thenceforth a pariah, issuing only to commit fresh murders, supported secretly by his relations, but never more known to the world at large; until at length a retributive bullet laid him low, or his hiding place was betrayed, and he miserably slain by the military police of his country.

This hydra-headed monster had grown to such an extent, that between the years 1770 and 1800, when the vendetta was at its height, some 7000 murders occurred, all on its account; and only the strenuous measures of the French government succeeded in checking the evil.

It was made penal for a man to carry a gun or any other weapon, except under certain restrictions, and in certain cases. This law continued in force for a few years, and worked so well that the number of violent deaths decreased almost to _nil_. But the law has been rescinded the last few years, and now again you see every man with his loaded gun. And the number of murders, although nothing like what it was in former times, yet has increased again greatly.

This inland region is specially the region of arms. You rarely meet a peasant without a gun strapped behind his shoulder, and a pistol or two in his vest; and our driver informed me that they are always carried loaded.

"With what?" I asked.

"With bullets, of course."

"To kill game?" asked I (knowing, however, that this was not the place for large game).

"Pour se defendre," said he, with a queer look.

"That means--to shoot one another as soon as a quarrel occurs?"

He shrugged his shoulders silently, and smiled assent.

In the vendetta one touch of barbarity is spared--the women and children are unassailed.

But instances where women have taken the law into their own hands, and shot a faithless lover, or even a family foe, are not unusual; and of course, they are constantly the provoking cause of many a masculine vendetta.

As a rule, these female murderers are leniently judged. One young woman, well known to our driver, had, a short time before, openly shot her lover through the heart with a pistol, but had only been condemned to six months' imprisonment; while another, for a similar offence, but probably rather less of provocation, had received sentence of a year's incarceration. Capital punishment is abolished in Corsica, and imprisonment for life substituted. It is doubtful whether this latter penalty, to the free islander, is not a more dreaded calamity than even the loss of life.

But the fierce and revengeful nature which has fostered the vendetta is combined with many noble qualities. The Corsican is, and always has been, honest, hospitable, and truthful; and he would scorn to take advantage of a lonely stranger. There is something essentially manly about these people; and the base and petty vices of more so-called refined countries are unknown to them. There is an immense difference between them and the people of the neighbouring island of Sardinia, or that of Sicily.

The Corsicans have a thorough and well-merited contempt for the natives of Sardinia. "They are nothing, those Sardes, but a race of robbers, assassins, and liars," said a man to me with emphasis at Bonifacio.

Bonifacio is the nearest Corsican town to Sardinia, and looks across some narrow straits towards the Italian island with no friendly feelings.

From what we heard of Sardinia, travelling is neither safe nor agreeable there. It is not a particularly interesting country save for its antiquarian remains, being far flatter and less full of natural beauties than Corsica; and, although it boasts a railway, it is as far behind its neighbour in civilization and in the character of its inhabitants, as in the facilities it affords to travellers.

The inns are, I believe, worse, and dirtier than in Corsica; the roads are not so good, and brigands abound; whilst there is little in the character of Sardinian scenery to compensate for the domestic discomfort.

The people are reported sly, and as possessing little of the honesty and courtesy common in Corsica; on the contrary, they regard travellers as their lawful prey. The railway trains are occasionally fired at and pillaged by brigands, and highway robbers still infest the country.

This was never the case in Corsica. For centuries the people have prided themselves upon their honesty, and a murder for greed of gold is unknown. The traveller's purse and his person are safe, amongst the wildest and roughest of the inhabitants. Quarrelling over money interests is unusual; and a vendetta is said to have been rarely, if ever, caused by a dispute over such matters.

The killing and slaying amongst the people has been barbarous enough, Heaven knows; but it has rarely owed its origin to any lower motive than a mistaken or exaggerated idea of honour, or, at the worst, a love of lawless freedom and adventure.

The difference between the Corsican bandit and the Sardinian or Sicilian brigand is the difference of races far apart from each other as the poles. Notwithstanding their contiguity, the two islands have rarely had anything to do with each other for many centuries, and the wild white breakers that roll, nine months of the year, between the "Bouches de Bonifacio," separate two nationalities that have never known sympathy.

A Corsican bandit can occasionally be a much nearer neighbour than one suspects.

A gentleman at Bocognano told us that a bandit, about a year ago, had spent six months in a cave at the bottom of a garden close to Ajaccio. During this time, he was regularly supplied at night with food by one or two friends, at which time also he emerged from his hiding-place and walked abroad with caution; and, at the end of the six months, took his departure and escaped to the mountains near. The garden was close to the house, and the bandit, in his gloomy hole, must have listened almost daily to the voices of the children playing about, and watched the householder and his wife as they strolled up and down.

It was only after the bird had flown that the owner was made aware of the strange visitor he had unconsciously harboured for so long in the vicinity of his home.

"Did it not give him a shudder to think of the man lying there close by, night and day?" I asked.

"Oh no," was the reply; "why should he fear? The bandit had no quarrel with _him_."

Walking through the lonely mountains, and in and out of the wild country rocks, one feels that one is in the natural country of the fierce outlaw; but in sunny, modern, cheery little Ajaccio, it is almost as difficult to realize the existence or the close proximity of the bandit as it would be in a Belgravian drawing-room.

For some time after leaving the dirty uninteresting-looking little village of Bocognano, the road continues very fine, descending constantly among magnificent mountain forms, heaped together in every direction, and passing under the grateful shade of young-leaved oaks and budding chestnuts. Miniature Geissbach falls dropped beside us, and long-haired goats, black, and brown, and parti-coloured, with graceful heads and large shy eyes, bounded past in terror.

At a village boasting the queer name of Fiasco, we took up our last relay of horses, and our fifth coachman. He was a young fellow with a gentle, smiling face and courteous manner. His horses were, contrary to most of the diligence horses, in excellent condition. They had not a rough or a sore place upon them apparently, which was more than could be said for any of the others; and their driver neither required nor used his long whip, nor did he indulge in the various and inharmonious yells of the other four coachmen.

This young man was afterwards introduced to us by a fellow-driver as a nephew and great admirer of the two Bella Coschia bandits.

"He looks kind," said I.

"He is a 'brave homme,'" was the warm reply; "and would not injure a fly"--which, I have no doubt, was true.

The barbarous condition in which horses, and especially mules, are driven in Corsica, is much to be deplored. It is a rare exception to meet with a mule without one or more sores upon its back or legs; and we sometimes saw them at work with an open wound the size of a saucer upon them. The flies in summer must be a terrible aggravation to the sufferings of these poor beasts.

As a rule, however, it is only the draught mules which are thus wounded; and the riding mules are generally whole and well-looking.

There is great excuse for the condition of the animals in the steep roads and the wretched pay received by their owners, the charettiers.

Forced to bring heavy loads of wood down mere mountain paths, dangerously steep and twisting, working often night and day for very insufficient pay, and often at risk of life and limb to themselves, these poor charettiers are constrained to overwork their mules, as they are themselves overworked, and have neither the power nor the inclination to spare them ill-usage.

Yet, I do not think the Corsican is often a voluntarily cruel driver. I never, or rarely, saw one of these wood-carters beating or personally ill-treating his mules. But all over the island there is a tacit indifference to animal suffering.

I wish the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would establish a branch for the service of mules and horses in Corsica. But they would probably find it hot work at first, as these are not a people who approve of interference in any quarter.

One lady, well known in Ajaccio, who took up a short time ago the cause of the poor mules, and made an effort to bring to justice one or two owners of ill-used animals, was rewarded by a small hornet's nest about her ears; and, I was told, had a note sent her anonymously "à l'Irlandais," in which she was informed that it was well for her she was of the weaker sex, or she might have suffered for her temerity!

As we approached the neighbourhood of Ajaccio, the mountains lowered their heads and soon gave place to wooded hills; and, beyond this, to fine rocks. Then, as the sun sank slowly towards the horizon, the fading sunlight fell upon a foaming river following the road, on one side, and lit up the upper part of the rich shrub-covered cliff which overhung it on the other.

We were now almost on level land, and a broad plain lay before us, about six miles long, marshy and malarious, at the end of which was the wide-stretching Mediterranean, blue and still, with a white tongue of land reaching out, and dotted with little houses sparkling in the last rays of evening sunshine.

This bright little town, lying on its white arm far out into the lovely sea, was Ajaccio. Round it curved many a bay; and beyond it gleamed many a distant island, as we sped over the plain at an easy gallop, under young Bella Coschia's gentle rein.

Then came an English-looking lane or two, with grassy banks and overhanging trees; and then, a sudden turn on to what may be called the Esplanade of Ajaccio--a broad flat road, shaded by a grateful avenue of chestnuts and sycamores, winding along the shore of the bay, past the quay and the statue of Napoleon, and up the hilly street of the gay little town.

No place could have looked fairer than did Ajaccio on our first view of it. Sea and sky were glowing crimson with sunset hues, the hills and promontories on the other side of the bay were a rich purple, while the houses shone bright and clean against the vivid background, their windows painted gold, and the streets shaded by fresh-leaved young trees.

The little town was all astir in the freshness and cool of a lovely spring evening; for it was just the time when, in Corsica, men, women, and children are all abroad in the streets.

Gay stalls of oranges and vegetables lined the ascent; bright red and blue uniforms mixed with blue blouses and brown velveteens; mule carts, with their jingling bells and scarlet trappings, ran up and down merrily; and men in their shirt sleeves (and every Corsican seems to wear a white shirt) sat before their open doors, smoking their pipes, with children and dogs playing round them, and their wives, in white or coloured head-gear, standing near in gossip under the trees.

A few young ladies, got up in tight dresses and frizzed hair, likewise walked, in couples, or arm in arm with a dark-complexioned father, solemnly up and down; while whiskered Frenchmen sat in front of the little cafés under their awnings, and sailors of several nations rolled merrily along the streets, whistling or singing.

Then on through the main street of the town, out again upon the blue sea, the Place de Napoleon with its fine statues of the first Napoleon and his four brothers, past the Hôtel de France close by, and up the Cours de Grandval a little way, planted with its avenue of young chestnuts,--on to Hôtel Germania, lying against a wooded hill, the last house in the street, with front door open to welcome the traveller, and green shutters just being turned back from the shaded windows.

Oh, the delights of once more entering an establishment where the polished floors shone with cleanliness, where the paper did not hang in foul strips from the walls, where indescribable odours did not greet one from every open window and up every staircase, and where the reptile and the insect knew no abiding-place! Oh, the revelling in tubs and cold water, the luxury of a bell with some one to answer it, and the charms of bread not sour, and butter that could be eaten!

Howsoever beautiful be nature, the most æsthetic mind is too much a slave to the vile body to know perfect mental enjoyment when living in constant dread of physical discomfort and disgust. Any one who has ever travelled out of the beaten track will understand the joy with which we took possession of our dainty little rooms at Ajaccio, after our week's roughing, and will excuse this rhapsody.