CHAPTER VI.

HOSPITALITY AND FAMILY LIFE IN ORETO--THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

"To Jove belong the stranger and the hungry, And though the gift be small, it cheers the heart."--_Odyssey._

An up-hill walk of two hours between fruit-gardens, the walls of which the beautiful wreaths of the clematis garlanded all the way along, and then through groves of chestnuts, brought me to Oreto.

The name is derived from the Greek oros, which means _mountain_; the place lies high and picturesque, on the summit of a green hill. A huge block of granite rears its gray head from the very centre of the village, a pedestal for the colossal statue of a Hercules. Before reaching the paese, I had to climb a laborious and narrow path, which at many parts formed the channel of a brook.

At length gaining the summit, I found myself in the piazza, or public square of the village, the largest I have seen in any paese. It is the plateau of the mountain, overhung by other mountains, and encircled by houses, which look like peace itself. The village priest was walking about with his beadle, and the _paesani_ stood leaning in the Sabbath-stillness on their garden walls. I stepped up to a group and asked if there was a locanda in the place; "No," said one, "we have no locanda, but I offer you my house--you shall have what we can give." I gladly accepted the offer, and followed my host. Marcantonio, before I entered his house, wished that I should take a look of the village fountain, the pride of Oreto, and taste the water, the best in the whole land of Casinca. Despite my weariness, I followed the Corsican. The fountain was delicious, and the little structure could even make pretensions to architectural elegance. The ice-cold water streamed copiously through five pipes from a stone temple.

Arrived in Marcantonio's house, I was welcomed by his wife without ceremony. She bade me a good evening, and immediately went into the kitchen to prepare the meal. My entertainer had conducted me into his best room, and I was astonished to find there a little store of books; they were of a religious character, and the legacy of a relative. "I am unfortunate," said Marcantonio, "for I have learnt nothing, and I am very poor; hence I must stay here upon the mountain, instead of going to the Continent, and filling some post." I looked more narrowly at this man in the brown blouse and Phrygian cap. The face was reserved, furrowed with passion, and of an iron austerity, and what he said was brief, decided, and in a bitter tone. All the time I was in his company, I never once saw this man smile; and found here, among the solitary hills, an ambitious soul tormented with its thwarted aspirations. Such minds are not uncommon in Corsica; the frequent success of men who have emigrated from these poor villages is a powerful temptation to others; often in the dingiest cabin you see the family likenesses of senators, generals, and prefects. Corsica is the land of upstarts and of natural equality.

Marcantonio's daughter, a pretty young girl, blooming, tall, and well-made, entered the room. Without taking any other notice of the presence of a guest, she asked aloud, and with complete _naïveté_: "Father, who is the stranger, is he a Frenchman; what does he want in Oreto?" I told her I was a German, which she did not understand. Giulia went to help her mother with the meal.

This now made its appearance--the most sumptuous a poor man could give--a soup of vegetables, and in honour of the guest a piece of meat, bread, and peaches. The daughter set the viands on the table, but, according to the Corsican custom, neither she nor the mother took a share in the meal; the man alone helped me, and ate beside me.

He took me afterwards into the little church of Oreto, and to the edge of the rock, to show me the incomparably beautiful view. The young curato, and no small retinue of _paesani_, accompanied us. It was a sunny, golden, delightfully cool evening. I stood wonderstruck at such undreamt-of magnificence in scenery as the landscape presented--for at my feet I saw the hills, with all their burden of chestnut woods, sink towards the plain; the plain, like a boundless garden, stretch onwards to the strand; the streams of the Golo and Fiumalto wind through it to the glittering sea; and far on the horizon, the islands of Capraja, Elba, and Monte Chiato. The eye takes in the whole coast-line to Bastia, and southwards to San Nicolao; turning inland, mountain upon mountain, crowned with villages.

A little group had gathered round us as we stood here; and I now began to panegyrize the island, rendered, as I said, so remarkable by its scenery and by the history of its heroic people. The young curate spoke in the same strain with great fire, the peasants gesticulated their assent, and each had something to say in praise of his country. I observed that these people were much at home in the history of their island. The curate excited my admiration; he had intellect, and talked shrewdly. Speaking of Paoli, he said: "His time was a time of action; the men of Orezza spoke little, but they did much. Had our era produced a single individual of Paoli's large and self-sacrificing spirit, it would be otherwise in the world than it is. But ours is an age of chimeras and Icarus-wings, and yet man was not made to fly." I gladly accepted the curate's invitation to go home with him; his house was poor-looking, built of black stone. But his little study was neat and cheerful; and there might be between two and three hundred volumes on the book-shelves. I spent a pleasant hour in conversation with this cultivated, liberal, and enlightened man, over a bottle of exquisite wine, Marcantonio sitting silent and reserved. We happened to speak of Aleria, and I put a question about Roman antiquities in Corsica. Marcantonio suddenly put in his word, and said very gravely and curtly--"We have no need of the fame of Roman antiquities--that of our own forefathers is sufficient."

Returning to Marcantonio's house, I found in the room both mother and daughter, and we drew in round the table in sociable family circle. The women were mending clothes, were talkative, unconstrained, and _naïve_, like all Corsicans. The unresting activity of the Corsican women is well known. Subordinating themselves to the men, and uncomplainingly accepting a menial position, the whole burden of whatever work is necessary rests upon them. They share this lot with the women of all warlike nations; as, for example, of the Servians and Albanians.

I described to them the great cities of the Continent, their usages and festivals, more particularly some customs of my native country. They never expressed astonishment, although what they heard was utterly strange to them, and Giulia had never yet seen a city, not even Bastia. I asked the girl how old she was. "I am twenty years old," she said.

"That is impossible. You are scarce seventeen."

"She is sixteen years old," said the mother.

"What! do you not know your own birthday, Giulia?"

"No, but it stands in the register, and the Maire will know it."

The Maire, therefore--happy man!--is the only person who can celebrate the birthday of the pretty Giulia--that is, if he chooses to put his great old horn-spectacles on his nose, and turn over the register for it.

"Giulia, how do you amuse yourself? young people must be merry."

"I have always enough to do; my brothers want something every minute; on Sunday I go to mass."

"What fine clothes will you wear to-morrow?"

"I shall put on the faldetta."

She brought the faldetta from a press, and put it on; the girl looked very beautiful in it. The faldetta is a long garment, generally black, the end of which is thrown up behind over the head, so that it has some resemblance to the hooded cloak of a nun. To elderly women, the faldetta imparts dignity; when it wraps the form of a young girl, its ample folds add the charm of mystery.

The women asked me what I was. That was difficult to answer. I took out my very unartistic sketch-book; and as I turned over its leaves, I told them I was a painter.

"Have you come into the village," asked Giulia, "to colour the walls?"

I laughed loudly and heartily; the question was an apt criticism of my Corsican sketches. Marcantonio said very seriously--"Don't; she does not understand such things."

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. There is not a single high-souled act of which the record has descended to us from antiquity but this uncultured people can place a deed of equal heroism by its side.

In honour of our young Corsican Giulia, I shall relate the following story. It is historical fact, like every other Corsican tale that I shall tell.

THE CORSICAN ANTIGONE.

It was about the end of the year 1768. The French had occupied Oletta, a considerable village in the district of Nebbio. As from the nature of its situation it was a post of the highest importance, Paoli put himself in secret communication with the inhabitants, and formed a plan for surprising the French garrison and making them prisoners. They were fifteen hundred in number, and commanded by the Marquis of Arcambal. But the French were upon their guard; they proclaimed martial law in Oletta, and maintained a strict and watchful rule, so that the men of the village did not venture to attempt anything.

Oletta was now still as the grave.

One day a young man named Giulio Saliceti left his village to go into the Campagna, without the permission of the French guard. On his return he was seized and thrown into prison; after a short time, however, he was set at liberty.

The youth left his prison and took his way homewards, full of resentment at the insult put upon him by the enemy. He was noticed to mutter something to himself, probably curses directed against the hated French. A sergeant heard him, and gave him a blow in the face. This occurred in front of the youth's house, at a window of which one of his relatives happened to be standing--the Abbot Saliceti namely, whom the people called Peverino, or Spanish Pepper, from his hot and headlong temper. When Peverino saw the stroke fall upon his kinsman's face, his blood boiled in his veins.

Giulio rushed into the house quite out of himself with shame and anger, and was immediately taken by Peverino into his chamber. After some time the two men were seen to come out, calm, but ominously serious.

At night, other men secretly entered the house of the Saliceti, sat together and deliberated. And what they deliberated on was this: they proposed to blow up the church of Oletta, which the French had turned into their barracks. They were determined to have revenge and their liberty.

They dug a mine from Saliceti's house, terminating beneath the church, and filled it with all the powder they had.

The date fixed for firing the mine was the 13th of February 1769, towards night.

Giulio had nursed his wrath till there was as little pity in his heart as in a musket-bullet. "To-morrow!" he said trembling, "to-morrow! Let me apply the match; they struck me in the face; I will give them a stroke that shall strike them as high as the clouds. I will blast them out of Oletta, as if the bolts of heaven had got among them!

"But the women and children, and those who do not know of it? The explosion will carry away every house in the neighbourhood."

"They must be warned. They must be directed under this or the other pretext to go to the other end of the village at the hour fixed, and that in all quietness."

The conspirators gave orders to this effect.

Next evening, when the dreadful hour arrived, old men and young, women, children, were seen betaking themselves in silence and undefined alarm, with secrecy and speed, to the other end of the village, and there assembling.

The suspicions of the French began to be aroused, and a messenger from General Grand-Maison came galloping in, and communicated in breathless haste the information which his commander had received. Some one had betrayed the plot. That instant the French threw themselves on Saliceti's house and the powder-mine, and crushed the hellish undertaking.

Saliceti and a few of the conspirators cut their way through the enemy with desperate courage, and escaped in safety from Oletta. Others, however, were seized and put in chains. A court-martial condemned fourteen of these to death by the wheel, and seven unfortunates were actually broken, in terms of the sentence.

Seven corpses were exposed to public view, in the square before the Convent of Oletta. No burial was to be allowed them. The French commandant had issued an order that no one should dare to remove any of the bodies from the scaffold for interment, under pain of death.

Blank dismay fell upon the village of Oletta. Every heart was chilled with horror. Not a human being stirred abroad; the fires upon the hearths were extinguished--no voice was heard but the voice of weeping. The people remained in their houses, but their thoughts turned continually to the square before the convent, where the seven corpses lay upon the scaffold.

The first night came. Maria Gentili Montalti was sitting on her bed in her chamber. She was not weeping; she sat with her head hanging on her breast, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Sometimes a profound sob shook her frame. It seemed to her as if a voice called, through the stillness of the night, O Marì!

The dead, many a time in the stillness of the night, call the name of those whom they have loved. Whoever answers, must die.

O Bernardo! cried Maria--for she wished to die.

Bernardo lay before the convent on the scaffold; he was the seventh and youngest of the dead. He was Maria's lover, and their marriage was fixed for the following month. Now he lay dead upon the scaffold.

Maria Gentili stood silent in the dark chamber, she listened towards the side where the convent lay, and her soul held converse with a spirit. Bernardo seemed to implore of her a Christian burial.

But whoever removed a corpse from the scaffold and buried it, was to be punished by death. Maria was resolved to bury her beloved and then die.

She softly opened the door of her chamber in order to leave the house. She passed through the room in which her aged parents slept. She went to their bedside and listened to their breathing. Then her heart began to quail, for she was the only child of her parents, and their sole support, and when she thought how her death by the hand of the public executioner would bow her father and mother down into the grave, her soul shrank back in great pain, and she turned, and made a step towards her chamber.

At that moment she again heard the voice of her dead lover wail: O Marì! O Marì! I loved thee so well, and now thou forsakest me. In my mangled body lies the heart that died still loving thee--bury me in the Church of St. Francis, in the grave of my fathers, O Marì!

Maria opened the door of the house and passed out into the night. With uncertain footsteps she gained the square of the convent. The night was gloomy. Sometimes the storm came and swept the clouds away, so that the moon shone down. When its beams fell upon the convent, it was as if the light of heaven refused to look upon what it there saw, and the moon wrapped itself again in the black veil of clouds. For before the convent a row of seven corpses lay on the red scaffold, and the seventh was the corpse of a youth.

The owl and the raven screamed upon the tower; they sang the vocero--the dirge for the dead. A grenadier was walking up and down, with his musket on his shoulder, not far off. No wonder that he shuddered to his inmost marrow, and buried his face in his mantle, as he moved slowly up and down.

Maria had wrapped herself in the black faldetta, that her form might be the less distinct in the darkness of the night. She breathed a prayer to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of Sorrows, that she would help her, and then she walked swiftly to the scaffold. It was the seventh body--she loosed Bernardo; her heart, and a faint gleam from his dead face, told her that it was he, even in the dark night. Maria took the dead man in her arms, upon her shoulder. She had become strong, as if with the strength of a man. She bore the corpse into the Church of St. Francis.

There she sat down exhausted, on the steps of an altar, over which the lamp of the Mother of God was burning. The dead Bernardo lay upon her knees, as the dead Christ once lay upon the knees of Mary. In the south they call this group Pietà.

Not a sound in the church. The lamp glimmers above the altar. Outside, a gust of wind that whistles by.

Maria rose. She let the dead Bernardo gently down upon the steps of the altar. She went to the spot where the grave of Bernardo's parents lay. She opened the grave. Then she took up the dead body. She kissed him, and lowered him into the grave, and again shut it. Maria knelt long before the Mother of God, and prayed that Bernardo's soul might have peace in heaven; and then she went silently away to her house, and to her chamber.

When morning broke, Bernardo's corpse was missing from among the dead bodies before the convent. The news flew through the village, and the soldiers drummed alarm. It was not doubted that the Leccia family had removed their kinsman during the night from the scaffold; and instantly their house was forced, its inmates taken prisoners, and thrown chained into a jail. Guilty of capital crime, according to the law that had been proclaimed, they were to suffer the penalty, although they denied the deed.

Maria Gentili heard in her chamber what had happened. Without saying a word, she hastened to the house of the Count de Vaux, who had come to Oletta. She threw herself at his feet, and begged the liberation of the prisoners. She confessed that it was she who had done that of which they were supposed to be guilty. "I have buried my betrothed," said she; "death is my due, here is my head; but restore their freedom to those that suffer innocently."

The Count at first refused to believe what he heard; for he held it impossible both that a weak girl should be capable of such heroism, and that she should have sufficient strength to accomplish what Maria had accomplished. When he had convinced himself of the truth of her assertions, a thrill of astonishment passed through him, and he was moved to tears. "Go," said he, "generous-hearted girl, yourself release the relations of your lover; and may God reward your heroism!"

On the same day the other six corpses were taken from the scaffold, and received a Christian burial.