CHAPTER I.

BIRTH.

I WAS born at Vezzani (Corsica), a little village lying between the mountains of Tanno and Cali, nearly in the centre of the island which was the birth-place of the greatest soldier of modern times. My family are regarded with well-deserved esteem throughout the canton. The mayor and the rector are two Griscellis, kinsmen of mine. Although not a lawyer, my father was frequently chosen by the magistrate and the chief justice as an arbitrator in certain questions of boundaries or family law-suits. He always managed so well to satisfy both parties that no appeal was ever made on his decisions.

My mother, an angel of goodness and charity, much loved throughout the country for her great kindness to the poor and infirm, and the services she rendered to all who addressed themselves to her, was mourned by the entire canton the day she died, leaving her husband and children in the deepest grief.

My brother was two years old, I was four, and

my father twenty-six. With great self-sacrifice he remained a widower rather than place his sons in a stepmother's power. Our grandmother undertook to bring us up; she was too fond of us not to gratify all our childish fancies, a great contrast to my father, who, while he loved us passionately, overlooked no action of ours, and corrected our most trifling faults. My brother, who was gentle and good, and physically frail and delicate, obeyed all our father's orders. As for me, I listened to no one; my character and nature were indomitable. At home as well as at the village school, instead of obeying others I wanted everyone to bend to my will.

Being unable to make me respect her, my grandmother sent me to the village school, conducted by an ex-Quartermaster of the Empire, who, although he felt a certain affection for his pupils, ruled them in a military way. Well, I confess with shame that the former Quartermaster in the grande armée, with all his punishments and privations, unable to get the better of me, was forced to go to my father and own himself beaten, "Because," as he said, "not only does your son worry me incessantly by his bad conduct, but he turns the others from their duty, and woe to the schoolmate who does not obey him to the letter! Blows, kicks, and very often bites, fall like hail upon the child who dares to resist his caprices."

My good father loved me dearly, but at the reports

of the schoolmaster and my grandmother he decided to send me to my uncle, Jean Pierre Baldovini, my mother's brother, and a shepherd at Piétre-Bionchi. I did not enter my uncle's house as a hired servant, but to help him look after his goats and ours, which formed part of my mother's dowry.

I cannot express the joy I felt in being at full liberty to act, speak, and play, without hearing someone take me to task.

My uncle was very affectionate to me. Never a reproach! never a counsel! All his moralizing consisted in saying-"See how I do. Try to imitate me, and before long you will be the first shepherd in the canton." What a future!

At that time I had no thought of ever seeing Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, or Constantinople.

My uncle and I lived six months in the mountains and six months in the plain-in the summer on the Salé mountain, above the village, in winter in Alesia, near the Mediterranean.

In these two spots I stayed alternately for six years, from the time I was nine years old; and if I had had the good fortune to be Arago or Bernardin de SaintPierre, I might have willed to posterity works on astronomy and nature which would have vied with those of the illustrious secretary of the Academy, and the no less illustrious author of "Paul and Virginia." In the mountain as on the plain (except on stormy

nights), the sky was our cover, the earth our mattress. Ah! how many times, seated on a rock or some tree which the gale had overthrown, did I not see the stars come out and fade away again.

When I was fifteen my father replaced me by my brother Ange-Paul, who hoped to gain some strength in the country air. Besides, my father wanted me to help him farm.

For the first few days I was well satisfied with the change. Being with my father was a source of great happiness to me; besides, I could meet my former friends and my relations, whom, as a shepherd, I had seen only at rare intervals. I saw once more the familiar country side, the church, and listened to the village bells, which I had not heard since my departure.

But in spite of all these pleasures there was one thing which made me forget them and bitterly regret the days which I had spent with my uncle. It was the pains which ran through my back, arms, and legs, during the first days, for our occupation allowed us but little rest.

We worked all the week, going to the village on Saturday evening. On Sunday we assisted at divine service, and in the evening we returned to the farm with our provisions for the ensuing week.

My brother had grown much stronger during his stay with our uncle.

My grandmother, who had brought us up, died and left us the house in which our forefathers had lived for generations past.

As we could not get on without a woman in the house, my father, who had not been willing to give us a stepmother when we were little lads, persisted in a resolution he had formed, and forced me, in a way, to marry one of my cousins, a beautiful young girl of seventeen, who might have made us happy, and prevented many extraordinary things which would never have occurred had she not listened to her mother's counsels.

She was our relative, she knew that my father and brother were working for us, and that they would have helped us to bring up our family. Perhaps my brother would have remained a bachelor, had not my wife, an angel of gentleness before her marriage, become an infernal demon the moment she was settled in the house. Her sole occupation was (in accordance with her mother's advice) to strip us of all she could to give to her family, not to mention the continual quarrels which she raised between my father and his two sons.

Fortunately the recruiting time came, and in spite of the tears and prayers of my relatives, and the substitute whom they had bought for me, I left to join the army. Had it not been for my wife's malice I should never have gone outside of my native village.