Talk with my Father (A). By Walter Frith Tallentyre, S. G.: Society in the Time of Voltaire 116, 264, 405, 547, 697, 812 Woman Apahà (The). By W. H. Adams 185 Young, George: The Story of the Princess Gorgona . Younghusband, Sir Francis, K.C.I.E.: General Romer Younghusband THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE. JANUARY 1906. SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. Memoirs of his adventures at home and abroad, and particularly in the Island of Corsica; beginning with the year 1756; written by his son Prosper Paleologus, otherwise Constantine; and edited by Q. CHAPTER XIII. HOW WITHOUT FIGHTING OUR ARMY WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT. ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. . . ANTONIO. True: save means to live. CALIBAN. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. UPON a sudden thought my father hurried us towards the tall belfry. It rose cold and white against the moon, at the end of a nettle-grown lane. A garth of ilex-oaks surrounded it; and beside it, more than half-hidden by the untrimmed trees, stood a ridiculously squat church. By instinct, or, rather, from association of ideas learnt in England, I glanced around this churchyard for its gravestones. There were none. Yet for the second time within these few hours I was strangely reminded of home, where in an upper garret were stacked half a dozen age-begrimed paintings on panel, one of which on an idle day two years ago I had taken a fancy to scour with soap and water. The painting represented a tall man, crowned and wearing Eastern armour, with a small slave in short jacket and baggy white breeches holding a white charger in readiness; all three figures awkwardly drawn and without Copyright, 1906, by A. T. Quiller-Couch, in the United States of Ar erica. VOL. XX.-NO. 115, N.S. 1 knowledge of anatomy. For background my scouring had brought to light a group of buildings, and among them just such a church as this, with just such a belfry. Of architecture and its different styles I knew nothing; but, comparing the church before me with what I could recollect of the painting, I recognised every detail, from the cupola, high-set upon open arches, to the round, windowless apse in which the building ended. My father, meanwhile, had taken a lantern and explored the interior. 'I know this place,' he announced quietly as he reappeared, after two or three minutes, in the ruinous doorway; 'it is called Paomia. We can bivouac in peace, and I doubt that by searching we could find a better spot.' We ate our supper of cold bacon and ship bread, both slightly damaged by sea water-but the wine solaced us, being excellent— and stretched ourselves to sleep under the ilex boughs, my father undertaking to stand sentry till daybreak. Nat and I protested against this, and offered ourselves; but he cut us short. He had his reasons, he said. It must have been two or even three hours later that I awoke at the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I stared up through the boughs at the setting moon, and around me at my comrades asleep in the grasses. He signed to me not to awake them, but to stand up and follow him softly. Passing through the screen of ilex, we came to a gap in the stone wall of the garth, and through this at the base of the hillside below the forest to a second screen of cypress which opened suddenly upon a semicircle of turf; and here, bathed in the moon's rays that slanted over the cypress-tops, stood a small Doric temple of weather-stained marble, in proportions most delicate, a background for a dance of nymphs, a fit tiring-room for Diana and her train. Its door-if ever it had possessed one-was gone, like every other door in this strange village. My father led the way up the white steps, halted on the threshold, and, standing aside lest he should block the moonlight, pointed within. I stood at his shoulder and looked. The interior was empty, bare of all ornament. On the wall facing the door, and cut in plain letters a foot high, two words confronted me : ΦΙΛΟΠΑΤΡΙ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΠΟΥΛΩΝ 'A tomb?' I asked. 'Yes, and a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this Philopater, who would buy nothing at the price of slavery, but, collecting a thousand souls-men, women, and children -escaped by ship from Porto Vitilo and sailed in search of a new home. At first he had thought of Sicily; but, finding no welcome there, he came (in the spring of 1675, I think) to Genoa, and obtained leave from the Genoese to choose a site in Corsica.' 'And it was here he planted his colony?' 'In this very valley; but, mind you, at the price of swearing fealty to the Republic of Genoa-this and the repayment of a beggarly thousand piastres which the Republic had advanced to pay the captain of the ship which brought them, and to buy food and clothing. Very generous treatment it seemed. Yet you have heard me say before now that liberty never stands in its worst peril until the hour of success; then too often men turn her sword against her. So these men of Lacedæmon, coming to an island where the rule of Genoa was a scourge to all except themselves, in gratitude, or for their oath's sake, took sides with the oppressor. Therefore the Corsicans, who never forget an injury, turned upon them, drove them for shelter to Ajaccio, and laid their valley desolate; nor have the Genoese power to restore them. 'Fate, Prosper, has landed you on this very spot where your kinsmen found refuge for awhile, and broke the ground, and planted orchards, hoping for a fair continuance of peace and peaceful tillage. 'How will Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum 'You say,' said I, 'that had we found our kinsmen here we had found them in league against freedom, and friends of the tyranny we are here to fight?' 'Assuredly.' 'Then, sir, let me read the omen as a lesson, and avoid my kinsmen's mistake.' My father smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. You say little, as a rule, Prosper. It is a good fault in kings.' We walked back to the churchyard, where Mr. Fett sat up, rubbing his eyes in the dawn, and hailed us: 'Good morning, signors! I have been dreaming that I came to a kingdom which, indeed, seemed to be an island, but on inspection proved to be a mushroom. What interpretation have you when a man dreams of mushrooms?' 'Why, this,' said I, 'that we passed some score of them in the meadow below. I saw them plain by the moonlight, and kicked at them to make sure." 'I did better,' said Mr. Fett; 'I gathered a dozen or two in my cap, foreseeing breakfast. Faith, and while you have been gadding I might have added a rasher of bacon. Did you meet any hogs on your way? But no; they turned back and took the path that appears to run up to the woods yonder.' 'They woke me, nosing and grunting among the nettles by the wall-lean, brown beasts with Homeric chines, and two or three of them huge as the Boar of Calydon. I was minded to let off my gun at 'em, but refrained upon two considerations-the first, that if they were tame, to shoot them might compromise our welcome here, and perhaps painfully, since the dimensions of the pigs appeared to argue considerable physical strength in their masters; the second, that if wild they might be savage enough to defend themselves when attacked.' 'Doubtless,' said my father, they belong to some herdsman in the forest above us, and have strayed down in search of acorns. They cannot belong to this village.' 'And why, pray?' 'Because it contains not a single inhabitant. Moreover, gentlemen, while you were sleeping I have taken a pretty extensive stroll. The vineyards lie unkempt, the vines themselves unthinned, up to the edge of the forest. The olive-trees have not been tended, but have shed their fruit for years with no man to gather. Many even have cracked and fallen under the weight of their crops. But no trace of beast, wild or tame, did I discover; no dung, no signs of trampling. The valley is utterly desolate.' 'It grows mushrooms,' said Mr. Fett cheerfully, piling a heap of dry twigs; and we have ship's butter and a frying-pan.' |