Itinerary through Corsica | Page 5

of Napoleon I. by Laboureur. To the left of the statue is the Hotel de Ville, the markets, and the commencement of the Rue Fesch, in which is the edifice containing the public library, the museum, and the memorial chapel (p. 5); while to the right is the Rue Napoleon, in which the first opening right leads into the Place Letitia. A little beyond this opening is No. 17, the house of the Pozzo di Borgo family, of whom Charles Andr��, 1768-1842, was the great upholder of Paoli and the bitter enemy of Napoleon I. Napoleon's house, though not equal to that of the Borgo family, was one of the best in Ajaccio. It is well built, of three stories of six windows each, and all the rooms have a more or less handsome marble chimney-piece. Over the door is inscribed on white marble "Napoleon est n�� dans cette maison le XV Aovt MDCCLXIX". A good staircase, bordered by a wrought-iron railing, leads to the top. The rooms shown are on the first floor. The first is the parlour, with a small table, a few chairs, and a piano said to have belonged to Mme. Letitia. Then after having passed through a small chamber we enter the room in which Napoleon was born, into which Madame was brought hurriedly from the church in the sedan chair kept in the end room. Over the chimney-piece are portraits of the father and mother. Then follows the dining-room, and after it the drawing-room, with inlaid wood floor and six windows on both sides. The floors of all the other rooms are of glazed tiles. In the next room is the sedan chair. Fee for party 1 fr.
This now silent and empty house was once enlivened and brightened by the fair Letitia and her large family of children, just like other men's children; schoolboys toiling at their Plutarch or C?sar, and their three young sisters growing up careless and rather wild, like their neighbours' daughters, in the half-barbarous island town. There is Joseph, the eldest, then Napoleon, the second born, then Lucien, Louis, and Jerome; then Caroline, Eliza, and Pauline, the children of a notary of moderate income, who is incessantly and vainly carrying on law-suits with the Jesuits of Ajaccio to gain a contested estate which is necessary to his numerous family. Their future fills him with anxiety; what will they be in the world and how will they secure a comfortable subsistence? And behold! these same children, one after the other, take to themselves the mightiest crowns of the earth--tear them from the heads of the most unapproachable kings of Europe and wear them in the sight of all the world; and they, the sons of an Ajaccio lawyer, cause themselves to be embraced as brothers and brothers-in-law by emperors and kings. Napoleon is European Emperor; Joseph King of Spain; Louis King of Holland; Jerome King of Westphalia; Caroline Queen of Naples and Pauline and Eliza Princesses of Italy. In 1793, after the flight of Madame Letitia and her children to her country residence, the Casone, the house was pillaged by the Corsicans opposed to the French Republic.
[Headnote: CATHEDRAL.]
Near the Place Letitia is the cathedral built in the 16th century by Pope Gregory. It contains the font at which Napoleon I. was baptized on the 21st July 1771.
[Headnote: MEMORIAL CHAPEL.]
In the Rue Fesch is the College founded in 1822. In one wing of the edifice is the public library, with 33,000 volumes, founded by Lucien Bonaparte, and the museum and picture gallery, with 900 paintings, mostly copies; and in the other the memorial chapel built by Napoleon III., lined with beautiful marble. In the crypt under the transept, left hand, is the tomb of Marie Letitia Ramolino, died at Rome in 1836; and right hand, that of Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, died at Rome in 1839. Both bodies were brought to this, their present resting-place, in 1851. There are, besides, the tombs of Prince Charles and of Zenaida his daughter. Napoleon's father died in 1785 and is buried at Montpellier. Madame was only 35 at his death and had already borne him 13 children, 5 of whom were dead, and Jerome was an infant in the cradle.
Parallel with the Rue Fesch is the Cours Napoleon, by which all the diligences enter and leave the town. The continuation round the bay is bordered with plane trees. At the commencement is a bronze statue of "E. C. Abbatucci n�� �� Zicavo le 12 Novembre 1770, mort pour la patrie le 2 Decembre 1796." Near it is the railway station.
At the western end of the Cours Napoleon is the Place Bonaparte or Diamant, bordered with trees and ornamented with a complicate bronze monument on a granite pedestal by Violet le Duc, "�� la memoire de