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For on the Continent, quite contrary to their practice in their own island, Corsicans quickly become friends. This fact was clearly exemplified on the present occasion. As long as della Rebbia and Barricini remained in Italy they were close friends.
It bore the signature of the elder Barricini, and informed Orso that he was laying the threatening letter sent to his son before the public prosecutor. His missive concluded thus: "Strong in the sense of a clear conscience, I patiently wait till the law has pronounced on your calumnies." Meanwhile five or six herdsmen, summoned by Colomba, arrived to garrison the della Rebbia Tower.
A few minutes after this message had been despatched, Orso came downstairs, and asked his sister whether the prefect had not sent for him. With the most perfect assurance she rejoined: "He begs you'll wait for him here." Half an hour went by without the slightest perceptible stir in the Barricini dwelling. Meanwhile Orso asked Colomba whether she had discovered anything.
After spending an hour with the deputy-mayor, and going into the Barricini house for a few minutes, the prefect, attended by a single gendarme, started for Corte. A quarter of an hour later, Chilina carried over the letter my readers have just perused, and delivered it into Orlanduccio's own hands. The answer was not prompt, and did not arrive till evening.
It was never known whether he meant this as an insinuation that the lawyer cheated his clients, or as a mere allusion to the commonplace truth that a bad cause often brings a lawyer more profit than a good one. However that may have been, the lawyer Barricini heard of the epigram, and never forgot it.
Many families hate each other because it has been an old-standing habit of theirs to hate each other; but the tradition of the original cause of their hatred may have completely disappeared. The family to which Colonel della Rebbia belonged hated several other families, but that of the Barricini particularly.
According to the custom of her country, Colomba improvised a ballata in presence of her father's corpse, and before his assembled friends. In it she poured out all her hatred against the Barricini, formally charged them with the murder, and threatened them with her brother's vengeance. It was this same ballata, which had grown very popular, that the sailor had sung before Miss Lydia.
The adherents of the Barricini remained inside their houses, and peeped out of the slits in their shutters. The village of Pietranera is very irregularly built, like most Corsican villages for indeed, to see a street, the traveller must betake himself to Cargese, which was built by Monsieur de Marboeuf.
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