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The murder of Vannina had made the Ornani his deadly foes. In order to avenge her blood, they played into the hands of the Genoese, and laid a plot by which the noblest of the Corsicans was brought to death. First, they gained over to their scheme a monk of Bastelica, called Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and shield-bearer, Vittolo.
While we read their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to one of the cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano, overshadowed by its mournful chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet red. The gridata, or wake, is assembled in a dark room.
The old candidate for the priesthood managed to deftly evade this query by an assurance that in Britain the people were too far off and in a theological climate of their own. He was in the highest humour, and in this unusual flow of spirits he harangued the men of Bastelica with great fluency, getting, however, at Sollacaro somewhat nervous as the interview with the Corsican leader drew nigh.
Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens, the fierce leaders of Chartism; Bakounin, Blanc, Richard, Jaclard, Andrieux, Bastelica, the flaming revolutionists of the Alliance; Briand, Sorel, Berth, the leading propagandists and philosophers of modern syndicalism; every one of them turned in despair from the movement.
He would lose himself in a delicious intoxication, amid the deep woodlands, the mountains rich with scented flowers, wandering through the maquis, the myrtle scrub, through jungles of lentisk and arbutus; barely containing his emotion when he passed beneath the great secular chestnut-trees of Bastelica, with their enormous trunks and leafy boughs, whose sombre majesty inspired in him a sort of melancholy at once poetic and religious.
Lory had called to his father once or twice, reassuring him, but without effect. The old count sat low in his saddle and urged his horse with a mechanical jerk of the heels. Thus they passed through the village of Bastelica a place with an evil name. It was early still, and but few were astir, for the peasants of the South are idle.
I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: "Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di Bonifacio, Paianatchi de Barbicaglia."
These licences, moreover, are only granted for short and precisely measured periods. In order to appreciate the stern and gloomy character of the Corsicans, it is necessary to leave the smiling gardens of Ajaccio, and to visit some of the more distant mountain villages Vico, Cavro, Bastelica, or Bocognano, any of which may easily be reached from the capital.
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