.

This man, who in himself is the whole staff of the Territorial Bank in
Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an old lighthouse-keeper upon
whom the solitude does not weigh. Our director-general leaves him there
partly for charity and partly because letters dated from the Taverna
quarry, now and again, make a good show at the shareholders' meetings.
I had the greatest difficulty extracting a little information from this
poor creature, three parts savage, who looked upon me with cautious
mistrust, half hidden behind the long hair of his goat-skin _pelone_. He
told me, however, without intending it, what the Corsicans understand by
the word "railway," and why they put on mysterious airs when they speak
of it. As I was trying to find out if he knew anything about the scheme
for a railway in the country, this old man, instead of smiling knowingly
like his compatriots, said, quite naturally, in passable French, his
voice rusty and benumbed like an ancient, little-used lock:

"Oh, sir, no need of a railway here."

"But it would be most valuable, most useful; it would facilitate
communications."

"I don't say no; but with the police we have enough here."

"The policemen?"

"Certainly."

This _quid pro quo_ went on for some five minutes before I discovered
that here the secret police service is called "the railway." As there
are many Corsican policemen on the Continent they use this euphemism to
designate the ignoble calling they follow. You inquire of the relations,
"Where is your brother Ambrosini? What is your uncle Barbicaglia doing?"
They will answer with a little wink, "He has a place on the railway,"
and every one knows what that means. Among the people, the peasants,
who have never seen a railway and don't know what it is, it is quite
seriously believed that the great occult administration of the Imperial
police has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the country
shares this touching simplicity of belief. It shows you the real
state of the "Line from Ajaccio to Bastia, passing by Bonifacio, Porto
Vecchio, etc.," as it is written on the big, green-backed books of
the house of Paganetti. In fact all the goods of the Territorial Bank
consist of a few sign-boards and two ruins, the whole not worthy of
lying in the "old materials" yard in the Rue Saint-Ferdinand; every
night as I go to sleep I hear the old vanes grating and the old doors
banging on emptiness.

But in this case, where have gone, where