CHAPTER IX.

PAOLI'S BIRTHPLACE.

It was late when I reached Rostino, or Morosaglia. Under this name is understood, not a single paese, but a number of villages scattered among the rude, stern hills. I found my way with difficulty through these little neighbour hamlets to the convent of Morosaglia, climbing rough paths over rocks, and again descending under gigantic chestnuts. A locanda stands opposite the convent, a rare phenomenon in the country districts of Corsica. I found there a lively and intelligent young man, who informed me he was director of the Paoli School, and promised me his assistance for the following day.

In the morning, I went to the little village of Stretta, where the three Paolis were born. One must see this Casa Paoli in order rightly to comprehend the history of the Corsicans, and award a just admiration to these singular men. The house is a very wretched, black, village-cabin, standing on a granite rock; a brooklet runs immediately past the door; it is a rude structure of stone, with narrow apertures in the walls, such as are seen in towers; the windows few, unsymmetrically disposed, unglazed, with wooden shutters, as in the time of Pasquale. When the Corsicans had elected him their general, and he was expected home from Naples, Clemens had glass put in the windows of the sitting-room, in order to make the parental abode somewhat more comfortable for his brother. But Paoli had no sooner entered and remarked the luxurious alteration, than he broke every pane with his stick, saying that he did not mean to live in his father's house like a Duke, but like a born Corsican. The windows still remain without glass; the eye overlooks from them the magnificent panorama of the mountains of Niolo, as far as the towering Monte Rotondo.

A relative of Paoli's--a simple country girl of the Tommasi family--took me into the house. Everything in it wears the stamp of humble peasant life. You mount a steep wooden stair to the mean rooms, in which Paoli's wooden table and wooden seat still stand. With joy, I saw myself in the little chamber in which Pasquale was born; my emotions on this spot were more lively and more agreeable than in the birth-chamber of Napoleon.

Once more that fine face, with its classic, grave, and dignified features, rose before me, and along with it the forms of a noble father and a heroic brother. In this little room Pasquale came to the world in April of the year 1724. His mother was Dionisia Valentina, an excellent woman from a village near Ponte Nuovo--the spot so fatal to her son. His father, Hyacinth, we know already. He had been a physician, and became general of the Corsicans along with Ceccaldi and Giafferi. He was distinguished by exalted virtues, and was worthy of the renown that attaches to his name as the father of two such sons. Hyacinth had great oratorical powers, and some reputation as a poet. Amid the din of arms those powerful spirits had still time and genial force enough to rise free above the actual circumstances of their condition, and sing war-hymns, like Tyrtæus.

Here is a sonnet addressed by Hyacinth to the brave Giafferi, after the battle of Borgo:--

"To crown unconquer'd Cyrnus' hero-son, See death descend, and destiny bend low; Vanquish'd Ligurians, by their sighs of wo, Swelling fame's trumpet with a louder tone. Scarce was the passage of the Golo won, Than in their fort of strength he storm'd the foe. Perils, superior numbers scorning so, Vict'ry still follow'd where his arms had shone. Chosen by Cyrnus, fate the choice approved, Trusting the mighty conflict to his sword, Which Europe rose to watch, and watching stands. By that sword's flash, e'en fate itself is moved; Thankless Liguria has its stroke deplored, While Cyrnus takes her sceptre from his hands."

Such men are as if moulded of Greek bronze. They are the men of Plutarch, and resemble Aristides, Epaminondas, and Timoleon. They could resign themselves to privation, and sacrifice their interests and their lives; they were simple, sincere, stout-hearted citizens of their country. They had become great by facts, not by theories, and the high nobility of their principles had a basis, positive and real, in their actions and experiences. If we are to express the entire nature of these men in one word, that word is Virtue, and they were worthy of virtue's fairest reward--Freedom.

My glance falls upon the portrait of Pasquale. I could not wish to imagine him otherwise. His head is large and regular; his brow arched and high, the hair long and flowing; his eyebrows bushy, falling a little down into the eyes, as if swift to contract and frown; but the blue eyes are luminous, large, and free--full of clear, perceptive intellect; and an air of gentleness, dignity, and benevolence, pervades the beardless, open countenance.

One of my greatest pleasures is to look at portraits and busts of great men. Four periods of these attract and reward our examination most--the heads of Greece; the Roman heads; the heads of the great fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and the heads of the eighteenth century. It would be an almost endless labour to arrange by themselves the busts of the great men of the eighteenth century; but such a Museum would richly reward the trouble. When I see a certain group of these together, it seems to me as if I recognised a family resemblance prevailing in it--a resemblance arising from the presence in each, of one and the same spiritual principle--Pasquale, Washington, Franklin, Vico, Genovesi, Filangieri, Herder, Pestalozzi, Lessing.

Pasquale's head is strikingly like that of Alfieri. Although the latter, like Byron, aristocratic, proud, and unbendingly egotistic, widely differs in many respects from his contemporary, Pasquale--the peaceful, philanthrophic citizen; he had nevertheless a soul full of a marvellous energy, and burning with the hatred of tyranny. He could understand such a nature as Paoli's better than Frederick the Great. Frederick once sent to this house a present for Paoli--a sword bearing the inscription, _Libertas_, _Patria_. Away in distant Prussia, the great king took Pasquale for an unusually able soldier. He was no soldier; his brother Clemens was his sword; he was the thinking head--a citizen and a strong and high-hearted man. Alfieri comprehended him better, he dedicated his _Timoleon_ to him, and sent him the poem with this letter:--

TO SIGNOR PASQUALE PAOLI, THE NOBLE DEFENDER OF CORSICA.

"To write tragedies on the subject of liberty, in the language of a country which does not possess liberty, will perhaps, with justice, appear mere folly to those who look no further than the present. But he who draws conclusions for the future from the constant vicissitudes of the past, cannot pronounce such a rash judgment. I therefore dedicate this my tragedy to you, as one of the enlightened few--one who, because he can form the most correct idea of other times, other nations, and high principles--is also worthy to have been born and to have been active in a less effeminate century than ours. Although it has not been permitted you to give your country its freedom, I do not, as the mob is wont to do, judge of men according to their success, but according to their actions, and hold you entirely worthy to listen to the sentiments of _Timoleon_, as sentiments which you are thoroughly able to understand, and with which you can sympathize.

VITTORIA ALFIERI."

Alfieri inscribed on the copy of his tragedy which he sent to Pasquale, the following verses:--

"To Paoli, the noble Corsican Who made himself the teacher and the friend Of the young France. Thou with the sword hast tried, I with the pen, In vain to rouse our Italy from slumber. Now read; perchance my hand interprets rightly The meaning of thy heart."

Alfieri exhibited much delicacy of perception in dedicating the _Timoleon_ to Paoli--the tragedy of a republican, who had once, in the neighbouring Sicily, given wise democratic laws to a liberated people, and then died as a private citizen. Plutarch was a favourite author with Paoli, as with most of the great men of the eighteenth century, and Epaminondas was his favourite hero; the two were kindred natures--both despised pomp and expensive living, and did not imagine that their patriotic services and endeavours were incompatible with the outward style of citizens and commoners. Pasquale was fond of reading: he had a choice library, and his memory was retentive. An old man told me that once, when as a boy he was walking along the road with a school-fellow, and reciting a passage from Virgil, Paoli accidentally came up behind him, slapped him on the shoulder, and proceeded himself with the passage.

Many particulars of Paoli's habits are still remembered by the people here. The old men have seen him walking about under these chestnuts, in a long green, gold-laced coat,[N] and a vest of brown Corsican cloth. When he showed himself, he was always surrounded by his peasantry, whom he treated as equals. He was accessible to all, and he maintained a lively recollection of an occasion when he had deeply to repent his having shut himself up for an hour. It was one day during the last struggle for independence; he was in Sollacaro, embarrassed with an accumulation of business, and had ordered the sentry to allow no one admission. After some time a woman appeared, accompanied by an armed youth. The woman was in mourning, wrapped in the faldetta, and wore round her neck a black ribbon, to which a Moor's head, in silver--the Corsican arms--was attached. She attempted to enter--the sentry repelled her. Paoli, hearing a noise, opened the door, and demanded hastily and imperiously what she wanted. The woman said with mournful calmness: "Signor, be so good as listen to me. I was the mother of two sons; the one fell at the Tower of Girolata; the other stands here. I come to give him to his country, that he may supply the place of his dead brother." She turned to the youth, and said to him: "My son, do not forget that you are more your country's child than mine." The woman went away. Paoli stood a moment as if thunderstruck; then he sprang after her, embraced with emotion mother and son, and introduced them to his officers. Paoli said afterwards that he never felt so embarrassed as before that noble-hearted woman.

He never married; his people were his family. His only niece, the daughter of his brother Clemens, was married to a Corsican called Barbaggi. But Paoli himself, capable of all the virtues of friendship, was not without a noble female friend, a woman of talent and glowing patriotism, to whom the greatest men of the country confided their political ideas and plans. This Corsican Roland, however, kept no _salon_; she was a nun, of the noble house of Rivarola. A single circumstance evinces the ardent sympathy of this nun for the patriotic struggles of her countrymen; after Achille Murati's bold conquest of Capraja, she herself, in her exultation at the success of the enterprise, went over to the island, as if to take possession of it in the name of Paoli. Many of Pasquale's letters are addressed to the Signora Monaca, and are altogether occupied with politics, as if they had been written to a man.

The incredible activity of Paoli appears from his collected letters. The talented Italian Tommaseo (at present living in exile in Corfu) has published a large volume containing the most important of these. They are highly interesting, and exhibit a manly, vigorous, and clear intellect. Paoli disliked writing--he dictated, like Napoleon; he could not sit long, his continually active mind allowed him no rest. It is said of him that he never knew the date; that he could read the future, and that he frequently had visions.

Paoli's memory is very sacred with his people. Napoleon elates the soul of the Corsican with pride, because he was his brother; but when you name the name of Paoli, his eye brightens like that of a son, at the mention of a noble departed father. 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." Flattery has often abused it and made it ridiculous; among the Corsicans I saw that it could also be applied with truth and justice.

Paoli contrasts with Napoleon, as philanthropy with self-love. No curses of the dead rise to execrate his name. At the nod of Napoleon, millions of human beings were murdered for the sake of fame and power. The blood that Paoli shed, flowed for freedom, and his country gave it freely as that mother-bird that wounds her breast to give her fainting brood to drink.

No battle-field makes Paoli's name illustrious; but his memory is here honoured by the foundation-school of Morosaglia, and this fame seems to me more human and more beautiful than the fame of Marengo or the Pyramids.

I visited this school, the bequest of the noble patriot. The old convent supplies an edifice. It consists of two classes; the lower containing one hundred and fifty scholars, the upper about forty. But two teachers are insufficient for the large number of pupils. The rector of the lower class was so friendly as to hold a little examination in my presence. I here again remarked the _naïveté_ of the Corsican character, as displayed by the boys. There were upwards of a hundred, between the ages of six and fourteen, separated into divisions, wild, brown little fellows, tattered and torn, unwashed, all with their caps on their heads. Some wore crosses of honour suspended on red ribbons; and these looked comical enough on the breasts of the little brown rascals--sitting, perhaps, with their heads supported between their two fists, and staring, frank and free, with their black eyes at all within range--proud, probably, of being Paoli scholars. These honours are distributed every Saturday, and worn by the pupil for a week; a silly, and at the same time, hurtful French practice, which tends to encourage bad passions, and to drive the Corsican--in whom nature has already implanted an unusual thirst for distinction--even in his boyhood, to a false ambition. These young Spartans were reading Telemachus. On my requesting the rector to allow them to translate the French into Italian, that I might see how they were at home in their mother-tongue, he excused himself with the express prohibition of the Government, which "does not permit Italian in the schools." The branches taught were writing, reading, arithmetic, and the elements of geography and biblical history.

The schoolroom of the lower class is the chapter-hall of the old convent in which Clemens Paoli dreamed away the closing days of his life. Such a spacious, airy Aula as that in which these Corsican youngsters pursue their studies, with the view from its windows of the mighty hills of Niolo, and the battle-fields of their sires, would be an improvement in many a German university. The heroic grandeur of external nature in Corsica seems to me to form, along with the recollections of their past history, the great source of cultivation for the Corsican people; and there is no little importance in the glance which that Corsican boy is now fixing on the portrait yonder on the wall--for it is the portrait of Pasquale Paoli.