Colomba

Preface

Prosper M£rimee has been known to the world of letters for nearly seventy-five years. Endowed with artistic instincts by a father who spent a large part of his life as secretary of the School of Fine Arts at Paris, and professor of art at the Polytechnic School, and who left behind a history of oil painting and a wall decoration in the Louvre, and also by a mother whose painting showed keen observation and skill, he made, when only twenty-two years old, a successful leap into fame. He had neglected his preparation for the law, to which his father destined him, and had yielded to the attractions of society and literature. His historical drama, Cromwell, enthusiastically received by the friends to whom he read it at a literary society, served as a stepping-stone to Le Tht&tre de Clara Gaznl, his first printed work, which took the public by storm. It was a collection of so-called translations from the reminiscences of a famous Spanish actress who had retired from the stage. Mdrim^e, fearful of failure, concealed himself under a double pseudonym ; for he not only attributed his own comiii iv

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positions to the imaginary Clara Gazul, but also wrote an introductory biographical sketch of this supposed author under the name of Joseph l’Estrange. The success of this book made Mdrimde no less prudent about those that followed. In his eagerness to find local color, he planned a journey with a friend ; but money was wanting for the necessary expenses. “ Let us write up our trip,” he said ; “ and with the money that the publication brings us, we will go to see whether the country agrees with our description.” In two weeks he had written a collection of Popular Songs of Dalmatia, called Guzla , from the name of a guitar used in the Illyrian provinces, legends of pure Parisian make, which the public accepted seriously, and heartily applauded. This, too, was preceded by the life of a pretended author, a poet called Hyacinthe Maglanovich. La Jacquerie, a tale of a peasant insurrection during the captivity of King John, and La Chronique du regne de Charles LX. followed, and gave Mdrimde a distinguished place in literature. He was asked to contribute to La Revue de Paris and La Revue des deux Mondes j and in these periodicals he published, between 1830 and 1845, his stories, Carmen , Les Ames du Purgatoire, Le Vase itrusque , La Venus d' I lie, Arsene Guillot, his masterpiece Colomba, which admitted him to the French Academy, and many other short sketches.

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On a journey to Spain in 1828, M^rimde became interested in archaeology, and devoted himself to it more or less diligently during the remainder of his life. After an interval of service in the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior, he was appointed to the congenial office of Inspector-General of Historic Monuments, for which he was well fitted. He was useful and thorough, and made his travels serve a literary as well as a scientific purpose. They brought him among strange people in the East, in Greece, England, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere, and gave opportunity for studying many varieties of human nature. He made himself the friend of muleteers, bull-fighters, and gypsies, eating and drinking with them, and at night telling ghost-stories which made their hair stand on end.

The first visit to Spain is memorable as marking the beginning of the life-long friendship between Mdrimde and the Countess of Montijo and her ^daughter Eugdnie. The countess was one of those cool, patient, optimistic, open-minded society leaders, who are the guides of men and events. She knew in what library or in what mind to find any desired information ; and having taken Mdrim^e under her wing, she set librarians, record-keepers, and professors to work for him. She told him the incident from which Carmen was developed, and gave him

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the material for Don Pldre. He told stories to his five-year-old charmer, and corrected her French exercises ; and years afterwards, when she became Empress of France as the wife of Napoleon III., she remembered her old friend by making him senator, and giving him a position at court.

During all these years Mdrimde was studying languages, often in their native places, and digging deep into their literature and history, leaving no stone unturned, as was his wont. He had an intimate knowledge of Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin, Russian, and English, and several dialects, besides his French, and some knowledge of German; and in the latter part of his life he devoted a great deal of attention to the study of comparative grammar. His work in Russian has a permanent value, for he made translations from that language into French which gave the first impulse to modern interest in Russian literature.

The most salient characteristic of Mdrimde’s nature was his self-repression. It began to show itself in the child of five years, who declared that he would never again allow his impulses full play. He had been reproved for some misdemeanor, and sent from his mother’s studio. His entreaties to be allowed to return receiving no answer, he opened the door, and dragged himself on his knees to his mother’s side, begging for her forgiveness. As she

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Vll glanced up from her painting, the ludicrousness of the picture of his humility struck her ; and her laugh changed the boy’s repentance into the feeling that he had been made the dupe of his sincerity. From this time his manner became extremely reserved and studied. He wore the mask of indifference in the presence of his tormenting cousins, and strove always to carry himself as if he were watched by a mocking spectator. The mocking spectator was the cynical Mdrimde, on guard over every act of Mdrimde the man of society. His dual nature displayed itself also in his friendships, as is perhaps most strikingly exemplified in his defence of M. Libri, an Italian who was accused of having appropriated certain valuable manuscripts which had disappeared from the libraries under his inspection. Mdrimee believed in Libri’s honesty, and published an article defending him, at the cost of fifteen days of imprisonment, and a fine of a thousand francs. Without accepting the offer of an enthusiastic Corsican to start a vendetta against the judge who had sentenced the author of Colombo,, Mdrimde went with ironical patience and grace to his cell, a place where he was neither inconvenienced by the sunlight nor troubled by visitors, as he pleasantly put it, and where he passed the time studying Russian, and writing Les Faux Demdtrius.

Mdrimde’s nature was under such continual re-

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viii

straint that the publication of the Lettres d une Inconnue, after his death, was looked forward to with great eagerness, as a solution of the enigma of

a life, of which the motto had been fj.efivr)<TO dnurTelv

remember to distrust. The question in every one*s mind, “ Had M^rimde a heart?” was answered in the affirmative by the expressions of tender love for the unknown lady of the letters. He showed himself affectionate, delicate in feeling, even poetical at times, as well as witty. On a visit to Greece, he wrote : —

“ I send you a blade of grass gathered on the hill of Anthela, at Thermopylae, on the spot where fell the last of the three hundred. It is not impossible that particles of the dead Leonidas mingle with the constituent atoms of this little flower. It was, I remember, at this very spot, while lying on heaped-up straw, and talking to my friend Ampere, that I told him that among the tender memories remaining to me there was only one unmixed with bitterness. I thought of our beautiful youth. Pray keep my foolish flower.”

Again, while visiting the amphitheatre at Nimes, M^rimde was closely followed and watched by a strange bird, said to be foreign to that region. He remembered that the Duchess of Buckingham saw her husband in the form of a bird on the day of his assassination ; and the idea flashed upon him that

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ix his loved one was dead, and had assumed that shape to visit him. “ In spite of myself, this nonsense distressed me,” he wrote to her; “and I was enchanted to find your letter dated on the day on which I first saw my marvellous bird.” But the ardent lover alternated with the severe critic ; and lie quarrelled with the unknown, and made up with her, for years, until at last the fragments of the old love were gathered into a calm, trusting friendship, which lasted to the end of their lives. The later letters, from 1848 to 1870, are filled with comments about books, society, politics, archaeology, and keen criticisms of noted people of the day; and in the very late letters there iswnuch about Merimde’s suffering. His health failed, as his disgust with the world increased ; and he went regularly to spend the winter at Cannes, where he practised archery and sketched, in order to pass the time, and paid kind attentions to his pet lizard, and to a cat which occupied a lonely neighboring cabin. In 1870, at the age of sixty-seven, he died, his physical health completely broken down, while his mind was as able and original as ever until the very last. He was buried at Cannes.

Although Merimde wrote history, notes of travel, critical essays, and valuable archaeological treatises, his lasting fame rests upon his fiction. He loved epochs and countries where life was wild and active,

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and passions strong, as in the mountains of Spain or the maquis of Corsica; and the peculiar prejudices of each place concentrated themselves into beings of his imagination, which little by little grew so real to him that they came forth from his brain full-formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Mdrimde’s stories are short, but he was a master in handling them. He always chose the most significant details, and all that were essential ; but not one superfluous word was admitted. Rien de plus was the principle by which he ruled his pen. With him compression did not result in stiffness. His words are simple, and his expression natural, graceful, and marked by the exquisite taste which characterized him in every walk of life. He had a wonderful elasticity and acuteness, which enabled him to adapt his style to a variety of subjects. Nearly every country of Europe, from Spain, Corsica, and Greece in the the south, to Russia and Sweden in the north, gave him inspiration, and became the scene of at least one story from him, true in local atmosphere and charm. Through the realism and finish of Mdrimde’s style, one yet feels the pessimism of his mind. It is almost unexpressed; but it is always there, a hovering, subtle irony. He never allowed himself to feel one heart-throb with his characters, just as he never allowed his critical nature to yield to his impulsive nature. He looked upon what he consid-

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xi ered as their vanities with indifference, or at best with an ironical smile. Some one once likened him to a monkey, which climbs to the top of the tree, and makes grimaces at the world below.

The heroines of Mdrimde’s books are universally bad. Throughout the list of romances, from La Chronique to Carmen , there is not one good woman in a prominent part. Not that Merimde did not believe in good ; but virtuous persons bored him, while the psychology of evil was interesting to him. Hence he permitted his heroines to lie and steal and bite, and be as unscrupulous as they pleased, provided they were graceful and charming, and beautiful to the eye. Among the whole array of wicked fair ones, Colomba is most firmly drawn and most finely shaded. She is the very incarnation of the revengeful spirit of Corsica. She knew the wild maquis , the lurking-places of the bandits ; her slender hand was skilful with the stiletto, her ballatas were weird and haunting. Bred on suspicions and hatreds, she was able to divine with keen intuition every secret thought and act of her enemies; and having once found it possible to kindle the fiery Corsican blood which civilized customs had not quite cooled in her brother’s veins, she did not lack artifices to urge him on to what she considered as the only honorable course in a land of trickery.

ROSE SHERMAN.

COLOMBA.

CHAPTER I. P& far la to vendetta

Yocero du Niolo.

In the early part of the month of October, 1 8 1— , Colonel Sir Thomas Nevil, a distinguished Irish officer of the English army, was stopping with his daughter at the Beauveau Hotel at Marseilles, on his return from a trip to Italy.

The continual admiration of everything by enthusiastic travellers has produced a reaction ; and in order to be odd, many tourists of the present day take Horace’s nil admirari for their motto. Miss Lydia, the only daughter of the colonel, belonged to this class of discontented travellers. She considered the Transfiguration mediocre, and an eruption of Vesuvius scarcely superior to the factory chimneys at Birmingham. In short, her principal objection to Italy was that the country lacked local coloring and characteristic features. At first Miss Lydia had flattered herself that she had found be- 3

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yond the Alps things that no one had seen before, which she could talk about avec les honnites gens, as Monsieur Jourdain says. But soon, when she found that her countrymen had been everywhere before her, she despaired of making discoveries, and threw herself into the opposing party. It is really very disagreeable not to be able to speak of the wonders of Italy without having some one exclaim, “ Of course you know that picture by Raphael in

the palace at ? It is the finest thing in

Italy.” And it is precisely what you have neglected to see. Since it takes too long to see everything, the simplest way is to condemn all in advance.

At the Beauveau Hotel Miss Lydia had a bitter disappointment. She had brought back a pretty sketch of the Pelasgian or Cyclopean Gate of Segni, which she believed had been overlooked by artists. Now Lady Frances Fenwick, whom she met at Marseilles, had shown her own sketchbook, in which appeared, between a sonnet and a dried flower, a drawing of that very gate, brilliantly colored with sienna. Miss Lydia gave her sketch to her chambermaid, and lost all interest in Pelasgian construction.

This unfortunate state of mind was shared by Colonel Nevil, who, since the death of his wife, had seen everything through Miss Lydia’s eyes. It seemed to him that Italy was very wrong to

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have bored his daughter, and it was consequently the most tiresome country in the world. He had nothing to say, it is true, against the pictures and the statues; but he was sure that hunting was wretched in that country, and that it was necessary to go ten leagues into the country around Rome, in the open sun, to kill even a few worthless red partridges.

The day after his arrival at Marseilles he invited his former adjutant, Captain Ellis, who had just spent six weeks in Corsica, to dine with him. The captain told Miss Lydia, in a very clever way, a story about bandits, which had the merit of being totally unlike the accounts of thieves which people had so often related to her on the road from Rome to Naples. At dessert the two men, left alone with the bottles of Bordeaux wine, talked of hunting; and the colonel learned that there was no country where game was better, more various, and more abundant than in Corsica.

“ There are a great many wild boars there,” said Captain Ellis ; “ and it is necessary to learn to distinguish them from the domestic hogs, which resemble them very closely ; for in killing hogs you get into a scrape with their keepers. These men rush out, armed to the teeth, from a thicket which they call maquis , make you pay for the beasts, and insult you. There is also the mouflon , a very strange

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animal, that is not found elsewhere, — excellent game, but hard to catch. Stags, deer, pheasants, partridges — it would be impossible to enumerate all the kinds of game that abound in Corsica. If you are fond of shooting, go to Corsica, Colonel ; there, as one of my friends said, you can fire upon all kinds of game, from a thrush to a man.”

At tea the captain entertained Miss Lydia again by an account of a transversale 1 revenge, still stranger than his first story ; and he made her quite enthusiastic for Corsica by describing the unique, wild aspect of the country, the original character of its inhabitants, their hospitality, and their primitive customs. Finally he gave her a pretty little stiletto, less remarkable for its form and its copper mounting than for its history. A famous bandit had given it to Captain Ellis, with the assurance that it had been thrust into four human bodies. Miss Lydia slipped it into her belt, placed it on the table beside her bed at night, and drew it twice from its sheath before she went to sleep. As for the colonel, he dreamed that he killed a mouflon , and that its owner demanded pay for it, which he gave willingly; for it was a very curious animal, resembling a wild boar, with a stag’s horns and a pheasant’s tail.

1 This is the vengeance taken upon a more or less distant relative of the offender.

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“Ellis says there is fine hunting in Corsica,” said the colonel, as he was taking breakfast alone with his daughter ; “ if it were not so far away, I should like to spend a fortnight there.”

“ Well,” replied Miss Lydia, “why should we not go to Corsica? While you were hunting, I would draw; I should be delighted to have in my album the grotto that Captain Ellis told us about, where Bonaparte went to study when he was a child.”

This was perhaps the first time that a desire manifested by the colonel had obtained the approbation of his daughter. Although delighted at this unexpected agreement, he had the good sense to make some objections in order to irritate Miss Lydia’s happy caprice. In vain he spoke of the wildness of the country, and the difficulty for & woman to travel there : she was afraid of nothing ; she liked above all things to travel on a horse; she rejoiced at the idea of sleeping in the open air ; she even threatened to go to Asia Minor. In short, she had this reply to everything, — that no Englishwoman had ever been in Corsica, and therefore she must go. And what pleasure, on her return to St. James’s Place, to show her album! “ But, my dear, why do you pass over this charming drawing?” — “ Oh, that is nothing. It is only a sketch of a famous Corsican bandit who was our guide.” — “ What, have you been in Corsica ! ”

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Since there were at that time no steamboats between France and Corsica, they inquired for some ship about to start for the island which Miss Lydia proposed to discover. On the same day the colonel wrote to Paris to countermand his order for a suite of rooms there, and bargained with the captain of a Corsican schooner bound for Ajaccio for two cabins, such as they were. Provisions were put on board ; the captain assured them that one of his old sailors was an excellent cook, unequalled for bouillabaisse ; and he promised that mademoiselle should be comfortable, and should have a fair wind and a smooth sea.

More than this, the colonel stipulated, according to the wishes of his daughter, that the captain should take no other passenger, and that he should contrive to skirt the coast of the island, that they might enjoy the view of the mountains.

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Chapter II

On the day fixed for the departure, everything was packed and put on board in the morning: the schooner was to sail with the evening breeze. In the meantime, while the colonel was walking with his daughter on the Canebi&re boulevard, the captain accosted him to ask permission to take on board one of his relatives, the second cousin of the godfather of his eldest son, who was returning to Corsica on pressing business, and could find no boat to take him over. “ He is a charming fellow,” added Captain Matei, “a soldier, an officer in the Light Infantry of the Guard, and he would be a colonel by this time if Napoleon were still emperor.”

“ Since he is a soldier ” — began the colonel, and he was going to add, “ I am very willing that he should come with us,” when Miss Lydia cried out in English, —

“ An infantry officer ! ” (Since her father had served in the cavalry, she scorned every other kind of service.) n Probably an uneducated man who will be seasick, and will spoil all the pleasure of the trip for us I”

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The captain did not understand a word of English, but he seemed to know what Miss Lydia said by the little pout of her pretty mouth ; and he began an elaborate eulogy of his relative, which he ended by saying that he was a gentleman, of a family of corporals, and that he would not trouble monsieur and mademoiselle in any way ; for he, the captain, would see that he was lodged in some corner where they would not be aware of his presence.

The colonel and Miss Lydia thought it singular that there should be families in Corsica in which the rank of corporal was handed down from father to son; but as they really thought that they were talking about a corporal in the infantry, they coneluded that he was some poor wretch whom the captain wished to take out of charity. Had he been an officer, they would have been obliged to talk with him and live with him; but surely there was no need of troubling themselves about a corporal, who is of little importance except when his detachment is present, with bayonets fixed, ready to lead some one where he does not wish to go.

“ Is your relative ever seasick?” asked Miss Nevil dryly.

“Never, mademoiselle; his stomach is as firm as a rock, on the sea as well as on land^”

“Well, you may take him,” she said.

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“You may take him,” repeated the colonel; and they continued their walk.

About five o’clock in the evening Captain Matei came to look for them, in order to take them on board the schooner. On the wharf, near the captain’s yawl, they found a tall young man dressed in a blue frock-coat buttoned up to his chin ; his complexion was sunburned, his eyes black, keen, and finely cut, and his countenance frank and intelligent. By the way in which he held back his shoulders, and by his short, curled mustache, it was easy to recognize that he was a soldier; for at that time mustaches were not common, and the National Guard had not yet introduced into all families the uniform and the manners of the guard - room.

On seeing the colonel the young man took off his cap, and without the slightest embarrassment thanked him politely for the service which he had rendered.

“ Glad to have been useful to you, my lad,” said the colonel, nodding pleasantly as he stepped into the yawl.

“ Your Englishman is rather unceremonious,” said the young man to the captain, speaking Italian in a low tone.

The captain placed his forefinger under his left eye, and drew down the corners of his mouth. To

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one who knew the language of signs, that meant that the Englishman understood Italian, and that he was a curious person. The young man smiled slightly, touched his forehead in reply to Matei’s sign, as if to say that all Englishmen had something askew in their heads, then seated himself beside the captain, and surveyed his pretty travelling companion with much attention, but without the least impertinence.

“ Those French soldiers have a fine bearing,” said the colonel to his daughter in English ; “ and for that reason they can easily be made officers.” Then, addressing the young man in French, he said, —

“ Tell me, my good fellow, in what regiment have you served ? ”

The soldier gave a slight nudge to the father of the godson of his second cousin, and suppressing an ironical smile, answered that he had been in the Foot Guard, and had just come from the Seventh Regiment of the Light Infantry.

“ Did you serve at Waterloo ? You are very young.”

“ Pardon me, Colonel ; that was my only campaign.”

“ It counts double,” said the colonel.

The young Corsican bit his lips.

“ Papa,” said Miss Lydia in English, “ ask him if the Corsicans love their Bonaparte very much.”

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Before the colonel had translated the question into French, the young man replied in very good English, although with a marked accent, —

“ You know that no one is a prophet in his own land. Perhaps we countrymen of Napoleon care less for him than the French do ; as for me, although my family was formerly hostile to his, I love and admire him.”

“ You speak English ! ” exclaimed the colonel.

“Very badly, as you can see.”

Although a little shocked at his free and easy tone, Miss Lydia could not help laughing at the thought of a personal enmity between a corporal and an emperor. This was like a foretaste of the peculiarities of Corsica, and she resolved to note down the fact in her journal.

“ Perhaps you have been a prisoner in England ? ” inquired the colonel.

“ No, Colonel ; I learned English in France, when I was very young, from a prisoner of your nation.” Then, turning to Miss Nevil, he said, —

“ Matei told me that you are returning from Italy. I suppose you speak pure Tuscan, mademoiselle ; you will find it difficult, I fear, to understand our dialect.”

“ My daughter understands all the Italian dialects,” replied the colonel ; “ she has a gift for languages. She is not like me.”

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“ Perhaps mademoiselle can understand these lines from one of our Corsican songs ? A shepherd says to a shepherdess : —

Miss Lydia did understand ; and finding the quotation rather bold, and the look that accompanied it still more so, she answered, blushing, —

“ Capisco .”

“ Are you returning home on a furlough ? ” asked the colonel.

“ No. They have put me on half pay, probably because I was at Waterloo, and because I am a fellow-countryman of Napoleon. I am going home ‘ Low in hopes, low in cash,’ as the song says.” And he sighed, glancing up towards the sky.

The colonel put his hand in his pocket, and drawing out a gold-piece, tried to think of a phrase with which he might politely slip it into the hand of his unfortunate enemy.

“ I, too, am on half pay,” he said good-humoredly ; “ but your half pay is not enough to allow you to buy tobacco. Take this, Corporal.” He tried to push the gold-piece into the closed hand which the young man rested on the side of the

1 If I should enter the blessed, blessed paradise, and should not find you there, I should go away. — Serenata di Zicavo.

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yawl ; but the Corsican, reddening, drew himself up, bit his lips, and seemed on the point of answering angrily, when his expression suddenly changed, and he burst out laughing. The colonel, with his coin in his hand, was dumb with amazement.

“ Colonel,” said the young man, recovering his gravity, “ let me give you two bits of advice : first, never offer money to a Corsican, for some of my countrymen are impolite enough to throw it at your head ; second, do not give people titles which they do not claim. You call me corporal, and I am lieutenant. Of course there is not much difference, but” —

“ Lieutenant ! ” cried Sir Thomas, “ lieutenant ! but the captain said that you were a corporal, like your father and all the men of your family.”

At these words the young man threw himself back, and began to laugh so heartily, and with such good grace, that the captain and his two sailors burst out in chorus.

“ I beg your pardon, Colonel,” the young man said at last ; “ but the mistake is so funny, and I did not understand it till just now. My family indeed takes pride in counting corporals among its ancestors; but our Corsican corporals have never worn stripes on their clothes. About the year 1100, some of the commons revolted against the tyranny of the mountain lords, and chose for them-

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selves chiefs whom they called caporaux. In our island we deem it an honor to be a descendant of tribunes of this kind.”

“ I beg a thousand pardons, sir,” exclaimed the colonel, extending his hand ; “ since you understand the cause of my mistake, I hope you will have the kindness to excuse it.”