The Isle of Unrest | Page 6

in the mountains scarce exceeded a score. The elections
were conducted more honestly than had ever been before, and the
Continental newspapers spoke hopefully of the dawn of civilization
showing itself among a people who have ever been lawless, have ever
loved war better than peace.
"But it is a false dawn," said the Abbé Susini of Olmeta, himself an
insatiable reader of newspapers, a keen and ardent politician. Like the
majority of Corsicans, he was a staunch Bonapartist, and held that the
founder of that marvellous dynasty was the greatest man to walk this
earth since the days of direct Divine inspiration.
It was only because Napoleon III was a Bonaparte that Corsica endured
his tyranny; perhaps, indeed, tyranny and an iron rule suited better than
equity or tolerance a people descended from the most ancient of the
fighting races, speaking a tongue wherein occur expressions of hate and
strife that are Tuscan, Sicilian, Greek, Spanish, and Arabic.
Now that the emperor's hand was losing its grip on the helm, there were
many in Corsica keenly alive to the fact that any disturbance in France
would probably lead to anarchy in the turbulent island. There were
even some who saw a hidden motive in the appointment of Colonel
Gilbert as engineer officer to a fortified place that had no need of his
services.

Gilbert himself probably knew that his appointment had been made in
pursuance of the emperor's policy of road and rail. For Corsica was to
be opened up by a railway, and would have none of it. And though
to-day the railway from Bastia to Ajaccio is at last open, the station at
Corte remains a fortified place with a loopholed wall around it.
But Colonel Gilbert kept his own counsel. He sat, indeed, on the board
of the struggling railway--a gift of the French Government to a
department which has never paid its way, has always been an open
wound. But he never spoke there, and listened to the fierce speeches of
the local members with his idle, easy smile. He seemed to stand aloof
from his new neighbours and their insular interests. He was, it appeared,
a cultured man, and perhaps found none in this wild island who could
understand his thoughts. His attitude towards his surroundings was, in a
word, the usual indifferent attitude of the Frenchman in exile, reading
only French newspapers, fixing his attention only on France, and
awaiting with such patience as he could command the moment to return
thither.
"Any news?" asked one of the artillery officers--a sub-lieutenant
recently attached to his battery, a penniless possessor of an historic
name, who perhaps had dreams of carving his way through to the front
again.
The colonel shrugged his shoulders.
"You may have the papers afterwards," he said; for it was not wise to
discuss any news in a public place at that time. "See you at the Réunion,
no doubt."
And he did not speak again except to Clément, who came round to take
the opinion of each guest upon the fare provided.
"Passable," said the colonel--"passable, my good Clément. But do you
know, I could send you to prison for providing this excellent leveret at
this time of year. Are there no game laws, my friend?"
But Clement only laughed and spread out his hands, for Corsica

chooses to ignore the game laws. And the colonel, having finished his
coffee, buckled on his sword, and went out into the twilight streets of
what was once the capital of Corsica. Bastia, indeed, has, like the
majority of men and women, its history written on its face. On the high
land above the old port stands the citadel, just as the Genoese
merchant-adventurers planned it five hundred years ago. Beneath the
citadel, and clustered round the port, is the little old Genoese town, no
bigger than a village, which served for two hundred and fifty years as
capital to an island in constant war, against which it had always to
defend itself.
It would seem that some hundred years ago, just before the island
became nominally a French possession, Bastia, for some reason or
another, took it into its municipal head to grow, and it ran as it were all
down the hill to that which is now the new harbour. It built two broad
streets of tall Genoese houses, of which one somehow missed fire, and
became a slum, while the other, with its great houses but half inhabited,
is to-day the Boulevard du Palais, where fashionable Bastia
promenades itself--when it is too windy, as it almost always is, to walk
on the Place St. Nicholas--where all the shops are, and where the
modern European necessities of daily life are not to be bought for love
or money.
There are, however, two excellent