The Isle of Unrest | Page 5

on the first floor.
"You stay with Clément," will be the natural remark of any on board
the Marseilles or Leghorn steamer, on being told that the traveller
disembarks at Bastia.
"We shall meet to-night chez Clément," the officers say to each other
on leaving the parade ground at four o'clock.
"Déjeuner chez Clément," is the usual ending to a notice of a marriage,
or a first communion, in the Petit Bastiais, that greatest of all
foolscap-size journals.
It is comforting to reflect, in these times of hurried changes, that the
traveller to Bastia may still find himself chez Clément--may still have
to kick at the closed door of the first-floor flat, and find that door
opened by Clément himself, always affable, always gentlemanly, with
the same crumbs strewed carelessly down the same waistcoat, or, if it is
evening time, in his spotless cook's dress. One may be sure of the same
grave welcome, and the easy transition from grave to gay, the smiling,
grand manner of conducting the guest to one of those vague and
darksome bedrooms, where the jug and the basin never match, where
the floor is of red tiles, with a piece of uncertain carpet sliding hither
and thither, with the shutters always shut, and the mustiness of the
middle ages hanging heavy in the air. For Bastia has not changed, and
never will. And it is not only to be fervently hoped, but seems likely,
that Clément will never grow old, and never die, but continue to live
and demonstrate the startling fact that one may be born and live all
one's life in a remote, forgotten town, and still be a man of the world.

The soup had been served precisely at six, and the four artillery officers
were already seated at the square table near the fireplace, which was
and is still exclusively the artillery table. The other habitués were in
their places at one or other of the half-dozen tables that fill the
room--two gentlemen from the Prefecture, a civil engineer of the
projected railway to Corte, a commercial traveller of the old school,
and, at the corner table, farthest from the door, Colonel Gilbert of the
Engineers. A clever man this, who had seen service in the Crimea, and
had invariably distinguished himself whenever the opportunity
occurred; but he was one of those who await, and do not seek
opportunities. Perhaps he had enemies, or, what is worse, no friends;
for at the age of forty he found himself appointed to Bastia, one of the
waste places of the War Office, where an inferior man would have done
better.
Colonel Gilbert was a handsome man, with a fair moustache, a high
forehead, surmounted by thin, receding, smooth hair, and good-natured,
idle eyes. He lunched and dined chez Clément always, and was frankly,
good naturedly bored at Bastia. He hated Corsica, had no sympathy
with the Corsican, and was a Northern Frenchman to the tips of his
long white fingers.
"Your Bastia, my good Clément," he said to the host, who invariably
came to the dining-room with the roast and solicited the opinion of
each guest upon the dinner in a few tactful, easy words--"your Bastia is
a sad place."
This evening Colonel Gilbert was in a less talkative mood than usual,
and exchanged only a nod with his artillery colleagues as he passed to
his own small table. He opened his newspaper, and became interested
in it at once. It was several days old, and had come by way of Nice and
Ajaccio from Paris. All France was at this time eager for news, and
every Frenchman studied the journal of his choice with that uneasiness
which seems to foreshadow in men's hearts the approach of any great
event. For this was the spring of 1870, when France, under the hitherto
iron rule of her adventurer emperor, suddenly began to plunge and rear,
while the nations stood around her wondering who should receive the

first kick. The emperor was ill; the cheaper journals were already
talking of his funeral. He was uneasy and restless, turning those dull
eyes hither and thither over Europe--a man of inscrutable face and deep
hidden plans--perhaps the greatest adventurer who ever sat a throne.
Condemned by a French Court of Peers in 1840 to imprisonment for
life, he went to Ham with the quiet question, "But how long does
perpetuity last in France?" And eight years later he was absolute master
of the country.
Corsica in particular was watching events, for Corsica was cowed. She
had come under the rule of this despot, and for the first time in her
history had found her master. Instead of being numbered by hundreds,
as they were before and are again now at the end of the century, the
outlaws hiding