m, but
the colonel knocked up the barrel, and said, "Let no man fire without
my orders!" The mayor, who, like Panurge, had "a natural fear of blows,"
refused to give battle, and retired, with his escort. Then the funeral
procession started, carefully choosing the longest way, so as to pass
in front of the mayor's house. As it was filing by, an idiot, who had
joined its ranks, took it into his head to shout, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Two or three voices answered him, and the Rebbianites, growing hotter,
proposed killing one of the mayor's oxen, which chanced to bar their
way. Fortunately the colonel stopped this act of violence.

It is hardly necessary to mention that an official statement was at once
drawn up, or that the mayor sent the prefect a report, in his sublimest
style, describing the manner in which all laws, human and divine, had
been trodden under foot--how the majesty of himself, the mayor, and of
the priest had been flouted and insulted, and how Colonel della Rebbia
had put himself at the head of a Bonapartist plot, to change the order
of succession to the throne, and to excite peaceful citizens to take
arms against one another--crimes provided against by Articles 86 and 91
of the Penal Code.

The exaggerated tone of this complaint diminished its effect. The
colonel wrote to the prefect and to the public prosecutor. One of his
wife's kinsmen was related to one of the deputies of the island, another
was cousin to the president of the Royal Court. Thanks to this interest,
the plot faded out of sight, Signora della Rebbia was left quiet in the
wood, and the idiot alone was sentenced to a fortnight's imprisonment.

Lawyer Barricini, dissatisfied with the result of this affair, turned
his batteries in a different direction. He dug out some old claim,
whereby he undertook to contest the colonel's ownership of a certain
water-course which turned a mill-wheel. A lawsuit began and dragged
slowly along. At the end of twelve months, the court was about to give
its decision, and according to all appearances in favour of the colonel,
when Barricini placed in the hands of the public prosecutor a letter,
signed by a certain Agostini, a well-known bandit, threatening him, the
mayor, with fire and sword if he did not relinquish his pretensions. It
is well known that in Corsica the protection of these brigands is
much sought after, and that, to oblige their friends, they frequently
intervene in private quarrels. The mayor was der