of porphyry), and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, faded by the proximity of those strange-looking mountains. Lower down, the granite was of sparkling grey, and under our feet it was like grated, crushed powder, we were walking on gleaming dust. To the right a roaring torrent rushed along, scolding, as it followed its long and winding course. You cannot avoid stumbling in the heat, the blinding light of that dry, burning, rugged valley, divided by the turbulent stream hurriedly trying to escape, unable to fertilise the rocks, lost in a furnace that licks it up greedily without ever being refreshed or moistened.
Suddenly on our right we saw a little wooden cross stuck in a heap of stones. A man had been killed there and I said to my companion: “Tell me about your bandits.”
He continued: “I knew the most celebrated, the most terrible one, Sainte-Lucie; I will tell you about him.
“His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the same district, so it was said, and Sainte-Lucie was left with an only sister. He was a little chap, weak and fainthearted; he was often ill and had no energy whatever, and he did not declare a vendetta against his father’s assassin. And though his relations came and begged him to avenge his loss, he was deaf to their threats and pleading.
“According to an old Corsican custom, his indignant sister took away his black clothes so that he might not wear mourning for the unavenged dead. To this insult he remained indifferent, and rather than take down his father’s still-loaded gun he shut himself up and never went out, afraid to face the contemptuous glances of his comrades.
“Months went by and he seemed to have entirely forgotten the crime, he went on living with his sister in their own house. Well, a day came when the suspected assassin was to be married, but even this news did not seem to trouble Sainte-Lucie, and the fiancé, probably out of bravado, passed the house of the two orphans on his way to church.
“Seated by the window, the brother and sister were eating little fried cakes when the young man noticed the wedding procession. Seized with a fit of trembling, he got up without saying a word, took down the gun, and left the house. Talking about what happened later, he said: ‘I don’t know what was the matter with me. I felt my blood boiling; I felt it had to be, that, in spite of everything, I could not resist the inevitable, and I went and hid the gun in the thicket on the Corte road.’
“An hour later he came back without the gun, looking tired and sad, as usual. His sister thought he had forgotten all about his father, but at nightfall he disappeared.
“The enemy, with his two groomsmen, was going to Corte that evening. As they were walking along, singing gaily, suddenly Sainte-Lucie rose up in front of them and, staring at the murderer, shouted: ‘The time has come!’ and shot him point-blank through the lungs.
“One of the groomsmen fled; the other, looking at Sainte-Lucie, said: ‘What is the matter with you?’ and as he was going for help Saint-Lucie shouted: ‘If you move another step I will break your leg.’ The other, knowing how cowardly he had always been, said: ‘You dare not!’ and started off, but fell to the ground immediately with a bullet through his leg.
“Sainte-Lucie went up to him and said: ‘I am going to look at the wound; if it is not serious I will leave you here, if mortal I will finish you off.’ He looked at the wound and decided it to be mortal, then slowly reloaded his gun, told the man to say a prayer, and shot him through the head.
“The next day he went up into the mountains.
“And what do you think Sainte-Lucie did afterwards?
“His relations were all arrested: his uncle, the priest who was suspected of inciting him to vengeance, was sent to prison on a charge made by the dead fiancé’s relations, but he escaped and with a gun joined his nephew in the forest.
“One after the other, Sainte-Lucie killed his uncle’s accusers, and plucked out their eyes, to teach others never to swear to anything they had not seen themselves.
“He killed all his enemy’s relatives and their friends, he murdered fourteen policemen, and burnt down the houses of his opponents, and until his death was the most terrible of all the bandits known.”
The sun was disappearing behind Monte Cinto, and the broad shadow of the granite mountain lay over the granite of the valley. We hurried along so as to reach the little village of Albertace—a heap of stones riveted to the granite sides of the wild gorge. I said, thinking of the bandit: “Your vendetta is a dreadful thing!”
My companion replied mildly: “It can’t be helped, a man must do his duty!”
A Dead Woman’s Secret
She had died painlessly, tranquilly, like a woman whose life was irreproachable, and she now lay on her back in bed, with closed eyes, calm features, her long white hair carefully arranged as if she had again made her toilet ten minutes before her death, all her pale physiognomy so composed, now that she had passed away, so resigned that one felt sure a sweet soul had dwelt in that body, that this serene grandmother had spent an untroubled existence, that this virtuous woman had ended her life without any shock, without any remorse.
On his knees, beside the bed, her son, a magistrate of inflexible principles, and her daughter Marguerite, in religion, Sister Eulalie, were weeping distractedly. She had from the time of their infancy armed them with an inflexible code of morality, teaching them a religion without weakness and a sense of duty without any compromise. He, the son, had become a magistrate, and, wielding the weapon of the law, he struck down without pity the feeble and the erring. She, the daughter,
