A CORSICAN ELECTION
Pozzonegro--near Sartene.
At last I can give you my news, dear M. Joyeuse. During the five dayswe have been in Corsica we have rushed about so much, made so manyspeeches, so often changed carriages and mounts--now on mules, now onasses, or even on the backs of men for crossing the torrents--written somany letters, noted so many requests, visited so many schools,presented chasubles, altar-cloths, renewed cracked bells, and foundedkindergartens; we have inaugurated so many things, proposed so manytoasts, listened to so many harangues, consumed so much Talano wine andwhite cheese, that I have not found time to send even a greeting to thelittle family circle round the big table, from which I have been missingthese two months. Happily my absence will not be for much longer, as weexpect to leave the day after to-morrow, and are coming straight backto Paris. From the electioneering point of view, I think our journey hasbeen a success. Corsica is an admirable country, indolent and poor, amixture of poverty and pride, which makes both the nobles and the middleclasses strive to keep up an appearance of easy circumstances at theprice of the most painful privations. They speak quite seriously ofPopolasca's fortune--that needy deputy whom death robbed of the fourthousand pounds his resignation in favour of the Nabob would havebrought him. All these people have, as well, an administrative mania, athirst for places which give them any sort of uniform, and a cap towear with the words "Government official" written on it. If you gave aCorsican peasant the choice between the richest farm in France and theshabbiest sword-belt of a village policeman, he would not hesitate andwould take the belt. In that conditions of things, you may imaginewhat chances of election a candidate has who can dispose of a personalfortune and the Government favours. Thus, M. Jansoulet will be elected;and especially if he succeeds in his present undertaking, which hasbrought us here to the only inn of a little place called Pozzonegro(black well). It is a regular well, black with foliage, consisting offifty small red-stone houses clustered round a long Italian church, atthe bottom of a ravine between rigid hills and coloured sandstone rocks,over which stretch immense forests of larch and juniper trees. From myopen window, at which I am writing, I see up above there a bit of bluesky, the orifice of the well; down below on the little square--whicha huge nut-tree shades as though the shadows were not already thickenough--two shepherds clothed in sheep-skins are playing at cards, withtheir elbows on the stone of a fountain. Gambling is the bane of thisland of idleness, where they get men from Lucca to do their harvesting.The two poor wretches I see probably haven't a farthing between them,but one bets his knife against a cheese wrapped up in vine leaves, andthe stakes lie between them on the bench. A little priest smokes hiscigar as he watches them, and seems to take the liveliest interest intheir game.
And that is not all. Not a sound anywhere except the drops of water onthe stone, the oaths of one of the players who swears by the _sangodel seminaro_, and from underneath my room in the inn parlour the eagervoice of our friend mingling with the sputterings of the illustriousPaganetti, who is interpreter, in his conversation with the not lessillustrious Piedigriggio.
M. Piedigriggio (gray feet) is a local celebrity. He is a tall, old manof seventy-five, with a flowing beard and a straight back. He wears alittle pilot coat, a brown wool Catalonian cap on his white locks. Athis belt he carries a pair of scissors to cut the long leaves of thegreen tobacco he smokes into the hollow of his hand. A venerable-lookingperson in fact, and when he crossed the square, shaking hands withthe priest, smiling protectingly at the gamblers, I would never havebelieved that I was looking at the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who heldthe woods in Monte-Rotondo from 1840 to 1860, outwitted the police andthe military, and who to-day, thanks to the proscription by which hebenefits, after seven or eight cold-blooded murders, moves peaceablyabout the country which witnessed his crimes, and enjoys a considerableimportance. This is why: Piedigriggio has two sons who, nobly followingin his footsteps, have taken to the carbine and the woods, in theirturn not to be found, not to be caught, as their father was, for twentyyears; warned by the shepherds of the movements of the police, when thelatter leave a village, they make their appearance in it. The eldest,Scipio, came to mass last Sunday at Pozzonegro. To say they love them,and that the bloody hand-shake of those wretches is a pleasure to allwho harbour them, would be to calumniate the peaceful inhabitants ofthis parish. But they fear them, and their will is law.
Now, these Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to favour ouropponent in the election. And their influence is a formidable power, forthey can make two whole cantons vote against us. They have longlegs, the rascals, as long in proportion as the reach of their guns.Naturally, we have the police on our side, but the brigands are far morepowerful. As our innkeeper said this morning: "The police, they go away;_ma_ the _banditti_ they stay." In the face of this logical reasoningwe understood that the only thing to be done was to treat with theGray-feet, to try a "job," in fact. The mayor said something of this tothe old man, who consulted his sons, and it is the conditions of thistreaty they are discussing downstairs. I hear the voice of our generaldirector, "Come, my dear fellow, you know I am an old Corsican myself,"and then the other's quiet replies, broken, like his tobacco, by theirritating noise of his scissors. The "dear fellow" does not seem tohave much confidence, and until the coin is ringing upon the table Ifancy there will not be any advance.
You see, Paganetti is known in his native country. The worth of his wordis written on the square in Corte, still waiting for the monument toPaoli, on the vast fields of carrots which he has managed to planton the Island of Ithaca, in the gaping empty purses of all thoseunfortunate small tradesmen, village priests, and petty nobility, whosepoor savings he has swallowed up dazzling their eyes with chimerical_combinazioni_. Truly, for him to dare to come back here, it needed allhis phenomenal audacity, as well as the resources now at his disposal tosatisfy all claims.
And, indeed, what truth is there in the fabulous works undertaken by theTerritorial Bank?
None.
Mines, which produce nothing and never will produce anything, for theyexist only on paper; quarries, which are still innocent of pick ordynamite, tracts of uncultivated sandy land that they survey with agesture, telling you, "We begin here, and we go right over there, asfar as you like." It is the same with the forests. The whole of a woodedhill in Monte-Rotondo belongs to us, it seems, but the felling of thetrees is impossible unless aeronauts undertake the woodman's work. It isthe same with the watering-places, among which this miserable hamletof Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain whoseastonishing ferruginous properties Paganetti advertises. Of thestreamers, not a shadow. Stay--an old, half-ruined Genoese tower on theshore of the Gulf of Ajaccio bears on a tarnished escutcheon, aboveits hermetically sealed doors, this inscription: "Paganetti's Agency.Maritime Company. Inquiry Office." Fat, gray lizards tend the office incompany with an owl. As for the railways, all these honest Corsicans towhom I spoke of it smiled knowingly, replied with winks and mysterioushints, and it was only this morning that I had the exceedinglybuffoonish explanation of all this reticence.
I had read among the documents which the director-general flaunts in oureyes from time to time, like a fan to puff up his impostures, the billof sale of a marble quarry at a place said to be "Taverna," two hours'distance from Pozzonegro. Profiting by our stay here, I got on a mulethis morning, without telling any one, and guided by a tall scamp ofa fellow with legs like a deer--true type of a Corsican poacher orsmuggler, his thick, red pipe in his mouth, his gun in a bandoleer--Iwent to Taverna. After a fearful progress across cracked rocks and bogs,past abysses of unsoundable depths--on the very edges of which mymule maliciously walked as though to mark them out with her shoes--wearrived, by an almost perpendicular descent, at the end of our journey.It was a vast desert of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with thedroppings of gulls and sea-fowl, for the sea is at the bottom, quitenear, and the silence of the place was broken only by the flow of thewaves and the shrill cries of the
wheeling circles of birds. My guide,who has a holy horror of excisemen and the police, stayed above on thecliff, because of a little coastguard station posted like a watchman onthe shore. I made for a large red building which still maintained, inthis burning solitude its three stories, in spite of broken windowsand ruinous tiles. Over the worm-eaten door was an immense sign-board:"Territorial Bank. Carr----bre----54." The wind, the sun, the rain, havewiped out the rest.
There has been there, certainly, a commencement of operations, for alarge square, gaping hole, cut out with a punch, is still open in theground, showing along its crumbling sides, like a leopard's spots, redslabs with brown veins, and at the bottom, in the brambles, enormousblocks of the marble, called in the trade "black-heart" (marble spottedwith red and brown), condemned blocks that no one could make anything offor want of a road leading to the quarry or a harbour to make the coastaccessible for freight ships, and for want, above all, of subsidiesconsiderable enough to carry out one or the other of these two projects.So the quarry remains abandoned, at a few cable-lengths from theshore, as cumbrous and useless as Robinson Crusoe's canoe in the sameunfortunate circumstances. These details of the heart-rending story ofour sole territorial wealth were furnished by a miserable caretaker,shaking with fever, whom I found in the low-ceilinged room of the yellowhouse trying to roast a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a pistachiobush.
This man, who in himself is the whole staff of the Territorial Bank inCorsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an old lighthouse-keeper uponwhom the solitude does not weigh. Our director-general leaves him therepartly for charity and partly because letters dated from the Tavernaquarry, now and again, make a good show at the shareholders' meetings.I had the greatest difficulty extracting a little information from thispoor creature, three parts savage, who looked upon me with cautiousmistrust, half hidden behind the long hair of his goat-skin _pelone_. Hetold me, however, without intending it, what the Corsicans understand bythe word "railway," and why they put on mysterious airs when they speakof it. As I was trying to find out if he knew anything about the schemefor a railway in the country, this old man, instead of smiling knowinglylike his compatriots, said, quite naturally, in passable French, hisvoice rusty and benumbed like an ancient, little-used lock:
"Oh, sir, no need of a railway here."
"But it would be most valuable, most useful; it would facilitatecommunications."
"I don't say no; but with the police we have enough here."
"The policemen?"
"Certainly."
This _quid pro quo_ went on for some five minutes before I discoveredthat here the secret police service is called "the railway." As thereare many Corsican policemen on the Continent they use this euphemism todesignate the ignoble calling they follow. You inquire of the relations,"Where is your brother Ambrosini? What is your uncle Barbicaglia doing?"They will answer with a little wink, "He has a place on the railway,"and every one knows what that means. Among the people, the peasants,who have never seen a railway and don't know what it is, it is quiteseriously believed that the great occult administration of the Imperialpolice has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the countryshares this touching simplicity of belief. It shows you the realstate of the "Line from Ajaccio to Bastia, passing by Bonifacio, PortoVecchio, etc.," as it is written on the big, green-backed books ofthe house of Paganetti. In fact all the goods of the Territorial Bankconsist of a few sign-boards and two ruins, the whole not worthy oflying in the "old materials" yard in the Rue Saint-Ferdinand; everynight as I go to sleep I hear the old vanes grating and the old doorsbanging on emptiness.
But in this case, where have gone, where are going now, the enormoussums M. Jansoulet has spent during the last five months--not to countwhat came from the outside, attracted by the magic of his name? Ithought, as you did, that all these soundings, borings, purchasings ofland that the books set forth in fine round-hand were exaggerated beyondmeasure. But who could suspect such effrontery? This is why the directorwas so opposed to the idea of bringing me on the electioneering trip.I don't want to have an explanation now. My poor Nabob has quite enoughtrouble in this election. Only, whenever we get back, I shall lay beforehim all the details of my long inquiry, and, whether he wants it or not,I will get him out of this den of thieves. They have finished below.Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, pulling up the slip-knot ofhis long peasant's purse, which looks to me well filled. The bargain ismade, I conclude. Good-bye, hurriedly, my dear M. Joyeuse; remember meto your daughters and ask them to keep a tiny little place for me roundthe work-table.
PAUL DE GERY.
The electioneering whirlwind which had enveloped them in Corsica,crossed the sea behind them like a blast of the sirocco and filled theflat in the Place Vendome with a mad wind of folly. It was overrun frommorning to night by the habitual element, augmented now by a constantarrival of little dark men, brown as the locust-bean, with regularfeatures and thick beards, some turbulent and talkative, like Paganetti,others silent, self-contained and dogmatic: the two types of the raceupon which the same climate produces different effects. All thesefamished islanders, in the depths of their savage country, promisedeach other to meet at the Nabob's table. His house had become an inn, arestaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room, where the table waskept constantly laid, there was always to be found some newly arrivedCorsican, with the bewildered and greedy appearance of a country cousin,having something to eat.
The boasting, clamorous race of election agents is the same everywhere;but these were unusually fiery, had a zeal even more impassioned andthe vanity of turkey-cocks, all worked up to white heat. The mostinsignificant recorder, inspector, mayor's secretary, villageschoolmaster, spoke as if he had the whole country behind him, and thepockets of his threadbare black coat full of votes. And it is a fact,in Corsican parishes (Jansoulet had seen it for himself) families areso old, have sprung from so little, have so many ramifications, that anypoor fellow breaking stones on the road is able to claim relationshipwith the greatest personages of the island, and is thereby able to exerta serious influence. These complications are aggravated still moreby the national temperament, which is proud, secretive, scheming, andvindictive; so it follows that one has to be careful how one walks amidthe network of threads stretching from one extremity of the people tothe other.
The worst was that all these people were jealous of each other,detested each other, and quarrelled across the table about the election,exchanging black looks and grasping the handles of their knives at theleast contradiction. They spoke very loud and all at once, some in thehard, sonorous Genoese dialect, and others in the most comical French,all choking with suppressed oaths. They threw in each other's teethnames of unknown villages, dates of local scandals, which suddenlyrevived between two fellow guests two centuries of family hatreds. TheNabob was afraid of seeing his luncheons end tragically, and strove tocalm all this violence and conciliate them with his large good-naturedsmile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta,though still existing in Corsica, no longer employs the stiletto or therifle except very rarely, and among the lowest classes. The anonymousletter had taken their place. Indeed, every day unsigned letters werereceived at the Place Vendome written in this style:
"M. Jansoulet, you are so generous that I cannot do less than point outto you that the Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) is a traitor, bought byyour enemies. I could say very differently about his cousin Bornalinco(Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the good cause, etc."
Or again:
"M. Jansoulet, I fear your chances of election will come to nothing, andare on a poor foundation for success if you continue to employ one namedCastirla (Josue), of the parish of Omessa. His relative, Luciani, is theman you need."
Although he no longer read any of these missives, the poor candidatesuffered from the disturbing effect of all these doubts and of all theseunchained passions. Caught in the gearing of those small intrigues, fullof fears, mistrustful, curious, feverish, he felt in every aching nervethe t
ruth of the Corsican proverb, "The greatest ill you can wish yourenemy is an election in his house."
It may be imagined that the check-book and the three deep drawers inthe mahogany cabinet were not spared by this hoard of devouring locustswhich had fallen upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" dwelling. Nothing couldbe more comic than the haughty manner in which these good islanderseffected their loans, briskly, and with an air of defiance. At the sametime it was not they who were the worst--except for the boxes of cigarswhich sank in their pockets as though they all meant to open a "Civette"on their return to their own country. For just as the very hotweather inflames and envenoms old sores, so the election had givenan astonishing new growth to the pillaging already established in thehouse. Money was demanded for advertising expenses, for Moessard'sarticles, which were sent to Corsica in bales of thousands of copies,with portraits, biographies, pamphlets--all the printed clamour thatit was possible to raise round a name. And always the usual work of thesuction-pumps went on, those pumps now fixed to this great reservoir ofmillions. Here, the Bethlehem Society, a powerful machine working withregular, slow-recurring strokes, full of impetus; the Territorial Bank,a marvellous exhauster, indefatigable, with triple and quadruple rowsof pumps, several thousand horse-power, the Schwalbach pump, the Boisl'Hery pump, and how many others as well? Some enormous and noisywith screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valvesknowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fineas the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the placewhence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bringabout if not a complete drought, at least a serious lowering of level.
Already evil rumours, vague as yet, were going the round of the Bourse.Was this a move of the enemy? For Jansoulet was waging a furious moneywar against Hemerlingue, trying to thwart all his financial operations,and was losing considerable sums at the game. He had against him his ownfury, his adversary's coolness, and the blunderings of Paganetti, whowas his man of straw. In any case his golden star was no longer inthe ascendant. Paul de Gery knew this through Joyeuse, who was now astock-broker's accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse. Whattroubled him most, however, was the Nabob's singular agitation, his needof constant distraction which had succeeded his former splendid calm ofstrength and security, the loss, too, of his southern sobriety. He kepthimself in a continual state of excitement, drinking great glassesof _raki_ before his meals, laughing long, talking loud, like a roughsailor ashore. You felt that here was a man overdoing himself to escapefrom some heavy care. It showed, however, in the sudden contraction ofall the muscles of his face, as some unhappy thought crossed hismind, or when he feverishly turned the pages of his little gilt-edgednote-book. The serious interview that Paul wanted so much Jansouletwould not give him at any price. He spent his nights at the club, hismornings in bed, and from the moment he awoke his room was full ofpeople who talked to him as he dressed, and to whom he replied, spongein hand. If, by a miracle, de Gery caught him alone for a second, hefled, stopping his words with a "Not now, not now, I beg of you." In theend the young man had recourse to drastic measures.
One morning, towards five o'clock, when Jansoulet came home from hisclub, he found a letter on the table near his bed. At first he took itto be one of the many anonymous denunciations he received daily. Itwas indeed a denunciation, but it was signed and undisguised; and itbreathed in every word the loyalty and the earnest youthfulness of himwho wrote it. De Gery pointed out very clearly all the infamies and allthe double dealing which surrounded him. With no beating about the bushhe called the rogues by their names. There was not one of the usualguests whom he did not suspect, not one who came with any other objectthan to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house allwas pillage and waste. Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach'sgallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. DeGery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses,with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended toJansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the realdanger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob's name, as chairmanof the company, hundreds of shareholders had fallen into the infamoustrap--poor seekers of gold, following the lucky miner. In the othermatters it was only money he lost; here his honour was at stake.He would discover what a terrible responsibility lay upon him if heexamined the papers of the business, which was only deception andcheatery from one end to the other.
"You will find the memorandum of which I speak," said Paul de Gery, atthe end of his letter, "in the top drawer of my desk along with sundryreceipts. I have not put them in your room, because I mistrust Noellike the rest. When I go away to-night I will give you the key. For Iam going away, my dear benefactor and friend, I am going away full ofgratitude for the good you have done me, and heartbroken that your blindconfidence has prevented me from repaying you even in part. As thingsare now, my conscience as an honest man will not let me stay any longeruseless at my post. I am looking on at a disaster, at the sack of apalace, which I can do nothing to prevent. My heart burns at all I see.I give handshakes which shame me. I am your friend, and I seem theiraccomplice. And who knows that if I went on living in such an atmosphereI might not become one?"
This letter, which he read slowly and carefully, even between the linesand through the words, made so great an impression on the Nabob that,instead of going to bed, he went at once to find his young secretary. DeGery had a study at the end of the row of public rooms where he slept ona sofa. It had been a provisional arrangement, but he had preferred notto change it.
The house was still asleep. As he was crossing the lofty rooms, filledwith the vague light of a Parisian dawn (those blinds were neverlowered, as no evening receptions were held there), the Nabob stopped,struck by the look of sad defilement his luxury wore. In the heavyodour of tobacco and various liqueurs which hung over everything, thefurniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded andstill new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautifulmarbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a hugefirst-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, theimpatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful,spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid.In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedyplayed there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold andstaring looking-glasses, stood out before him, forbidding yet comical,in absolute contrast to his elegant clothes, his eyes swollen, his facebloated and inflamed.
What an obvious and disenchanting to-morrow to the mad life he wasleading!
He lost himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave hisshoulders a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him--it was like apeddler shifting his pack--as though to rid himself of too cruel cares,and again took up the burden every man carried with him, which bows hisback, more or less, according to his courage or his strength, and wentinto de Gery's room, who was already up, standing at his desk sortingpapers.
"First of all, my friend," said Jansoulet, softly shutting the door fortheir interview, "answer me frankly. Is it really for the motives givenin your letter that you have resolved to leave me? Is there not, beneathit all, one of those scandals that I know are being circulated in Parisagainst me? I am sure you would be loyal enough to warn me and to giveme the opportunity of--of clearing myself to you."
Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that thosewere surely sufficient, since it was a matter of conscience.
"Then, my boy, listen to me, and I am sure of keeping you. Your letter,so eloquent of honesty and sincerity, has told me nothing that I havenot been convinced of for three months. Yes, my dear Paul, you wereright. Paris is more complicated than I thought. What I needed, when Iarrived, was an honest and disinterested cicerone to put me on my guardagainst people and things. I met only swindlers. Every worthless rascalin the town has left the mud of his boots on my carpets. I was lookingat them just now--my poor drawing-rooms. They need a fine sweeping out
.And I swear to you they shall have it, by God, and with no light hand!But I must wait for that until I am a deputy. All these scoundrels areof use to me for the election, and this election is far too necessarynow for me to risk losing the smallest chance. In a word, this is thesituation: Not only does the Bey mean to keep the money I lent him threemonths ago, but he has replied to my summons by a counter action foreighty millions, the sum out of which he says I cheated his brother. Itis a frightful theft, an audacious libel. My fortune is mine, my own. Imade it by my trade as a merchant. I had Ahmed's favour; he gave me theopportunity of becoming rich. It is possible I may have put on the screwa little tightly sometimes. But one must not judge these things froma European standpoint. Over there, the enormous profits the Levantinesmake is an accepted fact--a known thing. It is the ransom those savagespay for the western comfort we bring them. That wretch Hemerlingue, whois suggesting all this persecution against me, has done just as much.But what is the use of talking? I am in the lion's jaws. While waitingfor me to go to defend myself at his tribunals--and how I know it,justice of the Orient!--the Bey has begun by putting an embargo on allmy goods, ships, and palaces, and what they contain. The affair wasconducted quite regularly by a decree of the Supreme Court. YoungHemerlingue had a hand in that, you can see. If I am made a deputy, itis only a joke. The court takes back its decree and they give me backmy treasure with every sort of excuse. If I am not elected I loseeverything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibility of makinganother fortune. It is ruin, disgrace, dishonour. Are you going toabandon me in such a crisis? Think--I have only you in the whole world.My wife--you have seen her, you know what help, what support she isto her husband. My children--I might as well not have any. I never seethem; they would scarcely know me in the street. My horrible wealthhas killed all affection around me and has enveloped me with shamelessself-seeking. I have only my mother to love me, and she is far away, andyou who came to me from my mother. No, you will not leave me alone amidall the scandals that are creeping around me. It is awful--if you onlyknew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the littleviper's head of the Baroness Hemerlingue, I hear the echo of her hiss,I feel the venom of her bite. Everywhere mocking looks, conversationstopped when I appear, lying smiles, or kindness mixed with a littlepity. And then the deserters, and the people who keep out of the way asat the approach of a misfortune. Look at Felicia Ruys: just as she hadfinished my bust she pretends that some accident, I know not what, hashappened to it, in order to avoid having to send it to the _Salon_. Isaid nothing, I affected to believe her. But I understood that thereagain was some new evil report. And it is such a disappointment to me.In a crisis as grave as this everything has its importance. My bust inthe exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have helped me greatlyin Paris. But no, everything falls away, every one fails me. You see nowthat I cannot do without you. You must not desert me."