not a better world than that actually around us; and if the Chronicle
of Charles the Ninth provided an escape from the tame circumstances
of contemporary life into an impassioned past, Colomba is a measure
of the resources for mental alteration which may be found even in the
modern age. There was a corner of [23] the French Empire, in the
manners of which assassination still had a large part.

"The beauty of Corsica," says Merimee, "is grave and sad. The aspect
of the capital does but augment the impression caused by the solitude
that surrounds it. There is no movement in the streets. You hear
there none of the laughter, the singing, the loud talking, common in
the towns of Italy. Sometimes, under the shadow of a tree on the
promenade, a dozen armed peasants will be playing cards, or looking
on at the game. The Corsican is naturally silent. Those who walk
the pavement are all strangers: the islanders stand at their doors:
every one seems to be on the watch, like a falcon on its nest. All
around the gulf there is but an expanse of tanglework; beyond it,
bleached mountains. Not a habitation! Only, here and there, on the
heights about the town, certain white constructions detach themselves
from the background of green. They are funeral chapels or family
tombs."

Crude in colour, sombre, taciturn, Corsica, as Merimee here describes
it, is like the national passion of the Corsican--that morbid
personal pride, usurping the place even of grief for the dead, which
centuries of traditional violence had concentrated into an all-
absorbing passion for bloodshed, for bloody revenges, in collusion
with the natural wildness, and the wild social condition of the
island still unaffected even by the finer [24] ethics of the duel.
The supremacy of that passion is well indicated by the cry, put into