virtue of constancy, or
any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by
unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies
and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of
Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli.
From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes
were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation of their life at
Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more
talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were
only dormant; and they were certainly transmitted in their intensity
to the greatest scion of the race.

In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed by poverty or
distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy,
migrated to Corsica. There the family was grafted upon a tougher
branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed
under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a
more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the
Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa,
and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking
individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to
preserve the essential features of primitive life. Foreign Powers
might affect the towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans of
the interior comparatively untouched. Their life centred around the
family. The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not
the symbol of the detested foreign rule? Its laws were therefore as
naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of
family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the
warning words--"Guard thyself: I am on my guard." Forthwith there
began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary
course through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the
principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the families
were involved. No Corsican was so loathed as the laggard who shrank
from avenging the family honour, even on a distant relative of the
first offender. The murder of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1804
sent a thrill of horror through the Continent. To the Corsicans it
seemed little more than an autocratic version of the _vendetta
traversale_.[1]

The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively
rece