beautiful.

Not a blade of grass, not a plant-nothing but granite. As far as our eyes
could reach, we saw in front of us a desert of glittering stone, heated
like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that very purpose
right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards the crests, we
stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked like a festoon of
coral; all the summits are of porphyry; and the sky overhead was violet,
purple, tinged with the coloring of these strange mountains. Lower down,
the granite was of scintillating gray, and seemed ground to powder
beneath our feet. At our right, along a long and irregular course, roared
a tumultuous torrent. And we staggered along under this heat, in this
light, in this burning, arid, desolate valley cut by this torrent of
turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without
fertilizing the rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up
without being saturated or refreshed by it.

But, suddenly, there was visible at our right a little wooden cross sunk
in a little heap of stones. A man had been killed there; and I said to my
companion.

"Tell me about your bandits."

He replied:

"I knew the most celebrated of them, the terrible St. Lucia. I will tell
you his history.

"His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the district, it is
said; and St. Lucia was left alone with his sister. He was a weak, timid
youth, small, often ill, without any energy. He did not proclaim
vengeance against the assassin of his father. All his relatives came to
see him, and implored of him to avenge his death; he remained deaf to
their menaces and their supplications.

"Then, following the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her indignation
carried away his black clothes, in order that he might not wear mourning
for a dead man who had not been avenged. He was insensible to even this
affront, and rather than take down from the rack his father's gun, which
was still loaded, he shut himself up, not daring to brave the looks of
the young men of the district.

"He seemed to have even forgotten the crime, and lived with his sister in
the seclusion of their dwelling.

"But, one day, the man who was suspected of having committed the murder,
was about to get married. St. Lucia did not appear to be moved by this
news, but, out of sheer bravado, doubtless, the bridegroom, on his way to
the church, passed before the house of the two orphans.

"T