ve not found time to send even a greeting to the
little family circle round the big table, from which I have been missing
these two months. Happily my absence will not be for much longer, as we
expect to leave the day after to-morrow, and are coming straight back
to Paris. From the electioneering point of view, I think our journey has
been a success. Corsica is an admirable country, indolent and poor, a
mixture of poverty and pride, which makes both the nobles and the middle
classes strive to keep up an appearance of easy circumstances at the
price of the most painful privations. They speak quite seriously of
Popolasca's fortune--that needy deputy whom death robbed of the four
thousand pounds his resignation in favour of the Nabob would have
brought him. All these people have, as well, an administrative mania, a
thirst for places which give them any sort of uniform, and a cap to
wear with the words "Government official" written on it. If you gave a
Corsican peasant the choice between the richest farm in France and the
shabbiest sword-belt of a village policeman, he would not hesitate and
would take the belt. In that conditions of things, you may imagine
what chances of election a candidate has who can dispose of a personal
fortune and the Government favours. Thus, M. Jansoulet will be elected;
and especially if he succeeds in his present undertaking, which has
brought us here to the only inn of a little place called Pozzonegro
(black well). It is a regular well, black with foliage, consisting of
fifty small red-stone houses clustered round a long Italian church, at
the bottom of a ravine between rigid hills and coloured sandstone rocks,
over which stretch immense forests of larch and juniper trees. From my
open window, at which I am writing, I see up above there a bit of blue
sky, the orifice of the well; down below on the little square--which
a huge nut-tree shades as though the shadows were not already thick
enough--two shepherds clothed in sheep-skins are playing at cards, with
their elbows on the stone of a fountain. Gambling is the bane of this
land of idleness, where they get men from Lucca to do their harvesting.
The two poor wretches I see probably haven't a farthing between them,
but one bets his knife against a cheese wrapped up in vine leaves, and
the stakes lie between them on the bench. A little priest smokes his
cigar as he watches them, and seems to take the liveliest interest in
their game.

And that is