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Updated: June 19, 2025
The only care taken by Marc'antonio was to follow the bridle-tracks winding among the foothills, and give a wide berth to the highroad running north and south through Corte, especially to the bridges crossing the Golo River, at each of which, he assured me, we should find a guard posted of Paoli's militia.
"You would have found it full of eccentrics," said I. "I dare say," said he. "For myself, I said to myself when I took ship, 'Marc'antonio, said I, 'you must make it a rule to be surprised at nothing. But do Englishmen clean hogs'-sties for pleasure?" "And the Princess? She has also travelled?" I asked, meeting his question with another. For the moment my question appeared to disturb him.
Nor is this any marvel, for the young man learned his art in Florence, living in the house of Bernardo Canigiani, a Florentine gentleman and a crony of his father Domenico. In the same Verona, also, lives Bernardino, called L'India, who, besides many other works, has painted the Fable of Psyche in most beautiful figures on the ceiling of a chamber in the house of Count Marc'Antonio del Tiene.
From Marc'antonio I learned not only that this Corsica was a land with its own ambitions, which no stranger might share a nation small but earnest, in which my presence was merely impertinent and laughable withal but that the Prince Camillo's chances of becoming its king were only a trifle less derisory than my own.
We were weary, too, and hungry, and nothing remained to do but light the camp fire, cook our supper, and listen to Billy's tale of his adventures, a good part of which will be found in the following chapter. I ought to say, rather, that Billy and I conversed, while Marc'antonio for we spoke in English sat by the fire busy with his own thoughts; and, by his face, they were gloomy ones.
'You are a fool, O Stephanu, she told me; 'and as for needing you or Marc'antonio, on the contrary, I forbid you both to join the camp for a while. Go back.
"If I remember, I added that the Queen Emilia's bare word would be enough for me." "So. But you denied it on his father's, and that is what his enemies, the Paolists all, would give their ears to hear yes, and Pasquale Paoli himself, though he passes for a just man." "Marc'antonio," said I, seriously, "are the Prince and Princess in truth the children of King Theodore?"
He tilted his head still higher, towards the ridge and the rock on which I stood against his skyline, frantically waving. "And to think, lad," he panted, ten minutes later, as he stretched himself on the heath beside me "to think of your mistaking me for a deer!" "Did I say so, Billy? Then I lied. It was for a mufro I took you. Marc'antonio here had as good as promised me one."
So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us two alone. "Did the Princess know of this?"
So in the darkness, seated there upon the millstone with her gun across her knees, she told me all the story, very quietly: How at the last she had been found in the house in Brussels by Marc'antonio and Stephanu and fetched home to the island; how she had found there her brother Camillo in charge of Fra Domenico, his tutor and confessor; with what kindness the priest had received her, how he had confessed her and assured her that the book of those horrible years was closed; and how, nevertheless, the story had crept out, poisoning the people's loyalty and her brother's chances.
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