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Columba, a novel by Prosper Merimee |
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Chapter 2 |
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_ CHAPTER II On the day of their departure everything was packed and sent on board early in the morning. The schooner was to sail with the evening breeze. Meanwhile, as the colonel and his daughter were walking on the Canebiere, the skipper addressed them, and craved permission to take on board one of his relations, his eldest son's godfather's second cousin, who was going back to Corsica, his native country, on important business, and could not find any ship to take him over. "He's a charming fellow," added Captain Mattei, "a soldier, an officer in the Infantry of the Guard, and would have been a colonel already if _the other_ (meaning Napoleon) had still been emperor!" "As he is a soldier," began the colonel--he was about to add, "I shall be very glad he should come with us," when Miss Lydia exclaimed in English: "An infantry officer!" (Her father had been in the cavalry, and she consequently looked down on every other branch of the service.) "An uneducated man, very likely, who would be sea-sick, and spoil all the pleasure of our trip!" The captain did not understand a word of English, but he seemed to catch what Miss Lydia was saying by the pursing up of her pretty mouth, and immediately entered upon an elaborate panegyric of his relative, which he wound up by declaring him to be a gentleman, belonging to a family of _corporals_, and that he would not be in the very least in the colonel's way, for that he, the skipper, would undertake to stow him in some corner, where they should not be aware of his presence. The colonel and Miss Nevil thought it peculiar that there should be Corsican families in which the dignity of corporal was handed down from father to son. But, as they really believed the individual in question to be some infantry corporal, they concluded he was some poor devil whom the skipper desired to take out of pure charity. If he had been an officer, they would have been obliged to speak to him and live with him; but there was no reason why they should put themselves out for a corporal--who is a person of no consequence unless his detachment is also at hand, with bayonets fixed, ready to convey a person to a place to which he would rather not be taken. "Is your kinsman ever sea-sick?" demanded Miss Nevil sharply. "Never, mademoiselle, he is as steady as a rock, either on sea or land!" "Very good then, you can take him," said she. "You can take him!" echoed the colonel, and they passed on their way. Toward five o'clock in the evening Captain Mattei came to escort them on board the schooner. On the jetty, near the captain's gig, they met a tall young man wearing a blue frock-coat, buttoned up to his chin; his face was tanned, his eyes were black, brilliant, wide open, his whole appearance intelligent and frank. His shoulders, well thrown back, and his little twisted mustache clearly revealed the soldier--for at that period mustaches were by no means common, and the National Guard had not carried the habits and appearance of the guard-room into the bosom of every family. When the young man saw the colonel he doffed his cap, and thanked him in excellent language, and without the slightest shyness, for the service he was rendering him. "Delighted to be of use to you, my good fellow!" said the colonel, with a friendly nod, and he stepped into the gig. "He's not very ceremonious, this Englishman of yours," said the young man in Italian, and in an undertone, to the captain. The skipper laid his forefinger under his left eye, and pulled down the corners of his mouth. To a man acquainted with the language of signs, this meant that the Englishman understood Italian, and was an oddity into the bargain. The young man smiled slightly and touched his forehead, in answer to Mattei's sign, as though to indicate that every Englishman had a bee in his bonnet. Then he sat down beside them, and began to look very attentively, though not impertinently, at his pretty fellow-traveller. "These French soldiers all have a good appearance," remarked the colonel in English to his daughter, "and so it is easy to turn them into officers." Then addressing the young man in French, he said, "Tell me, my good man, what regiment have you served in?" The young man nudged his second cousin's godson's father gently with his elbow, and suppressing an ironic smile, replied that he had served in the Infantry of the Guard, and that he had just quitted the Seventh Regiment of Light Infantry. "Were you at Waterloo? You are very young!" "I beg your pardon, colonel, that was my only campaign." "It counts as two," said the colonel. The young Corsican bit his lips. "Papa," said Miss Lydia in English, "do ask him if the Corsicans are very fond of their Buonaparte." Before the colonel could translate her question into French, the young man answered in fairly good English, though with a marked accent: "You know, mademoiselle, that no man is ever a prophet in his own country. We, who are Napoleon's fellow-countrymen, are perhaps less attached to him than the French. As for myself, though my family was formerly at enmity with his, I both love and admire him." "You speak English!" exclaimed the colonel. "Very ill, as you may perceive!" Miss Lydia, though somewhat shocked by the young man's easy tone, could not help laughing at the idea of a personal enmity between a corporal and an emperor. She took this as a foretaste of Corsican peculiarities, and made up her mind to note it down in her journal. "Perhaps you were a prisoner in England?" asked the colonel. "No, colonel, I learned English in France, when I was very young, from a prisoner of your nation." Then, addressing Miss Nevil: "Mattei tells me you have just come back from Italy. No doubt, mademoiselle, you speak the purest Tuscan--I fear you'll find it somewhat difficult to understand our dialect." "My daughter understands every Italian dialect," said the colonel. "She has the gift of languages. She doesn't get it from me." "Would mademoiselle understand, for instance, these lines from one of our Corsican songs in which a shepherd says to his shepherdess: ("If I entered the holy land of paradise ---Serenata di Zicavo.
"And are you going back to your own country on furlough?" inquired the colonel. "No, colonel, they have put me on half-pay, because I was at Waterloo, probably, and because I am Napoleon's fellow-countryman. I am going home, as the song says, low in hope and low in purse," and he looked up to the sky and sighed. The colonel slipped his hand into his pocket, and tried to think of some civil phrase with which he might slip the gold coin he was fingering into the palm of his unfortunate enemy. "And I too," he said good-humouredly, "have been put on half-pay, but your half-pay can hardly give you enough to buy tobacco! Here, corporal!" and he tried to force the gold coin into the young man's closed hand, which rested on the gunwale of the gig. The young Corsican reddened, drew himself up, bit his lips, and seemed, for a moment, on the brink of some angry reply. Then suddenly his expression changed and he burst out laughing. The colonel, grasping his gold piece still in his hand, sat staring at him. "Colonel," said the young man, when he had recovered his gravity, "allow me to offer you two pieces of advice--the first is never to offer money to a Corsican, for some of my fellow-countrymen would be rude enough to throw it back in your face; the second is not to give people titles they do not claim. You call me 'corporal,' and I am a lieutenant--the difference is not very great, no doubt, still----" "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "But the skipper told me you were a corporal, and that your father and all your family had been corporals before you!" At these words the young man threw himself back and laughed louder than ever, so merrily that the skipper and his two sailors joined the chorus. "Forgive me, colonel!" he cried at last. "The mistake is so comical, and I have only just realized it. It is quite true that my family glories in the fact that it can reckon many corporals among its ancestors--but our Corsican corporals never wore stripes upon their sleeves! Toward the year of grace 1100 certain villages revolted against the tyranny of the great mountain nobles, and chose leaders of their own, whom they called _corporals_. In our island we think a great deal of being descended from these tribunes." "I beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the colonel, "I beg your pardon a thousand times! As you understand the cause of my mistake, I hope you will do me the kindness of forgiving it!" and he held out his hand. "It is the just punishment of my petty pride," said the young man, still laughing, and cordially shaking the Englishman's hand. "I am not at all offended. As my friend Mattei has introduced me so unsuccessfully, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Orso della Rebbia; I am a lieutenant on half-pay; and if, as the sight of those two fine dogs of yours leads me to believe, you are coming to Corsica to hunt, I shall be very proud to do you the honours of our mountains and our _maquis_--if, indeed, I have not forgotten them altogether!" he added, with a sigh. At this moment the gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck. Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter's consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes. Miss Lydia frowned a little, but, after all, she was not sorry to know what a corporal really was. She rather liked there guest, and was even beginning to fancy there was something aristocratic about him--only she thought him too frank and merry for a hero of romance. "Lieutenant della Rebbia," said the colonel, bowing to him, English fashion, over a glass of Madeira, "I met a great many of your countrymen in Spain--they were splendid sharp-shooters." "Yes, and a great many of them have stayed in Spain," replied the young lieutenant gravely. "I shall never forget the behaviour of a Corsican battalion at the Battle of Vittoria," said the colonel; "I have good reason to remember it, indeed," he added, rubbing his chest. "All day long they had been skirmishing in the gardens, behind the hedges, and had killed I don't know how many of our horses and men. When the retreat was sounded, they rallied and made off at a great pace. We had hoped to take our revenge on them in the open plain, but the scoundrels--I beg your pardon, lieutenant; the brave fellows, I should have said--had formed a square, and there was no breaking it. In the middle of the square--I fancy I can see him still--rode an officer on a little black horse. He kept close beside the standard, smoking his cigar as coolly as if he had been in a cafe. Every now and then their bugles played a flourish, as if to defy us. I sent my two leading squadrons at them. Whew! Instead of breaking the front of the square, my dragoons passed along the sides, wheeled, and came back in great disorder, and with several riderless horses--and all the time those cursed bugles went on playing. When the smoke which had hung over the battalion cleared away, I saw the officer still puffing at his cigar beside his eagle. I was furious, and led a final charge myself. Their muskets, foul with continual firing, would not go off, but the men had drawn up, six deep, with their bayonets pointed at the noses of our horses; you might have taken them for a wall. I was shouting, urging on my dragoons, and spurring my horse forward, when the officer I have mentioned, at length throwing away his cigar, pointed me out to one of his men, and I heard him say something like _'Al capello bianco!'_--I wore a white plume. Then I did not hear any more, for a bullet passed through my chest. That was a splendid battalion, M. della Rebbia, that first battalion of the Eighteenth--all of them Corsicans, as I was afterward told!" "Yes," said Orso, whose eyes had shone as he listened to the story. "They covered the retreat, and brought back their eagle. Two thirds of those brave fellows are sleeping now on the plains of Vittoria!" "And, perhaps, you can tell me the name of the officer in command?" "It was my father--he was then a major in the Eighteenth, and was promoted colonel for his conduct on that terrible day." "Your father! Upon my word, he was a brave man! I should be glad to see him again, and I am certain I should recognise him. Is he still alive?" "No, colonel," said the young man, turning slightly pale. "Was he at Waterloo?" "Yes, colonel; but he had not the happiness of dying on the field of battle. He died in Corsica two years ago. How beautiful the sea is! It is ten years since I have seen the Mediterranean! Don't you think the Mediterranean much more beautiful than the ocean, mademoiselle?" "I think it too blue, and its waves lack grandeur." "You like wild beauty then, mademoiselle! In that case, I am sure you will be delighted with Corsica." "My daughter," said the colonel, "delights in everything that is out of the common, and for that reason she did not care much for Italy." "The only place in Italy that I know," said Orso, "is Pisa, where I was at school for some time. But I can not think, without admiration, of the Campo-Santo, the Duomo, and the Leaning Tower--especially of the Campo-Santo. Do you remember Orcagna's 'Death'? I think I could draw every line of it--it is so graven on my memory." Miss Lydia was afraid the lieutenant was going to deliver an enthusiastic tirade. "It is very pretty," she said, with a yawn. "Excuse me, papa, my head aches a little; I am going down to my cabin." She kissed her father on the forehead, inclined her head majestically to Orso, and disappeared. Then the two men talked about hunting and war. They discovered that at Waterloo they had been posted opposite each other, and had no doubt exchanged many a bullet. This knowledge strengthened their good understanding. Turning about, they criticised Napoleon, Wellington, and Blucher, and then they hunted buck, boar, and mountain sheep in company. At last, when night was far advanced, and the last bottle of claret had been emptied, the colonel wrung the lieutenant's hand once more and wished him good-night, expressing his hope that an acquaintance, which had begun in such ridiculous fashion, might be continued. They parted, and each went to bed. _ |
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