style--that is to say, doing nothing--on the income from his flocks, which
the shepherds, who are a kind of nomads, lead to pasture here and there on
the mountains. When I saw him, two years after the event that I am about
to relate, he appeared to me to be about fifty years old or more. Picture
to yourself a man, small but robust, with curly hair, black as jet, an
aquiline nose, thin lips, large, restless eyes, and a complexion the color
of tanned leather. His skill as a marksman was considered extraordinary
even in his country, where good shots are so common. For example, Mateo
would never fire at a sheep with buckshot; but at a hundred and twenty
paces, he would drop it with a ball in the head or shoulder, as he chose.
He used his arms as easily at night as during the day. I was told this
feat of his skill, which will, perhaps, seem impossible to those who have
not travelled in Corsica. A lighted candle was placed at eighty paces,
behind a paper transparency about the size of a plate. He would take aim,
then the candle would be extinguished, and, at the end of a moment, in the
most complete darkness, he would fire and hit the paper three times out of
four.

With such a transcendent accomplishment, Mateo Falcone had acquired a
great reputation. He was said to be as good a friend as he was a dangerous
enemy; accommodating and charitable, he lived at peace with all the world
in the district of Porto-Vecchio. But it is said of him that in Corte,
where he had married his wife, he had disembarrassed himself very
vigorously of a rival who was considered as redoubtable in war as in love;
at least, a certain gun-shot which surprised this rival as he was shaving
before a little mirror hung in his window was attributed to Mateo. The
affair was smoothed over and Mateo was married. His wife Giuseppa had
given him at first three daughters (which infuriated him), and finally a
son, whom he named Fortunato, and who became the hope of his family, the
inheritor of the name. The daughters were well married: their father could