You are quite right, colonel. You and I are the reasonable members of
this family. We should be very foolish if we let ourselves by martyrized
by that pair of lovers, who live on poetry! Give me your arm! Don't you
think I'm improving? I lean on people's arms, wear fashionable hats and
gowns and trinkets--I'm learning I don't know how many fine things--I'm
not at all a young savage any more. Just observe the grace with which I
wear this shawl. That fair-haired spark--that officer belonging to
your regiment who came to the wedding--oh, dear! I can't recollect
his name!--a tall, curly-headed man, whom I could knock over with one
hand----"

"Chatsworth?" suggested the colonel.

"That's it!--but I never shall be able to say it!--Well, you know he's
over head and ears in love with me!"

"O Colomba, you're growing a terrible flirt! We shall have another
wedding before long."

"I! Marry! And then who will there be to bring up my nephew--when Orso
provides me with a nephew? And who'll teach him to talk Corsican? Yes,
he shall talk Corsican, and I'll make him a peaked cap, just to vex
you."

"Well, well, wait till you have your nephew, and then you shall teach
him to use a dagger, if you choose."

"Farewell to daggers!" said Colomba merrily. "I have a fan now, to rap
your fingers with when you speak ill of my country."

Chatting thus, they reached the farm-house, where they found wine,
strawberries, and cream. Colomba helped the farmer's wife to gather the
strawberries, while the colonel drank his _aleatico_. At the turning of
a path she caught sight of an old man, sitting in the sun, on a straw
chair. He seemed ill, his cheeks were fallen in, his eyes were hollow,
he was frightfully thin; as he sat there, motionless, pallid, staring
fixedly in front of him, he looked more like a corpse than like a living
creature. Colomba watched him for some minutes, and with a curiosity so
great that it attracted the woman's attention.

"That poor old fellow is a countryman of yours," she said. "For I know
you are from Corsica by the way you talk, signorina! He has had great
trouble in his own country. His children met with some terrible death.
They say--you'll excuse me, signorina--that when they quarrel, your
compatriots don't show each other very much mercy. Then the poor
old gentleman, being left all alone, came over to Pisa, to a distant
relation of his, who owns this farm. Between his misfortunes and his
sorrow, the good man i