he land should take their fill before the cows were
milked.

Sampiero belongs to a later period of Corsican history. After a long
course of misgovernment the Genoese rule had become unbearable. There
was no pretence of administering justice, and private vengeance had
full sway in the island. The sufferings of the nation were so great
that the time had come for a new judge or saviour to rise among them.
Sampiero was the son of obscure parents who lived at Bastelica. But
his abilities very soon declared themselves, and made a way for him in
the world. He spent his youth in the armies of the Medici and of the
French Francis, gaining great renown as a brave soldier. Bayard became
his friend, and Francis made him captain of his Corsican bands. But
Sampiero did not forget the wrongs of his native land while thus on
foreign service. He resolved, if possible, to undermine the power
of Genoa, and spent the whole of his manhood and old age in one
long struggle with their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of his stern
patriotism and Roman severity of virtue the following story is a
terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of mean birth, had
married an heiress of the noble Corsican house of the Ornani. His
wife, Vannina, was a woman of timid and flexible nature, who, though
devoted to her husband, fell into the snares of his enemies. During
his absence on an embassy to Algiers the Genoese induced her to leave
her home at Marseilles and to seek refuge in their city, persuading
her that this step would secure the safety of her child. She was
starting on her journey when a friend of Sampiero arrested her, and
brought her back to Aix, in Provence. Sampiero, when he heard of these
events, hurried to France, and was received by a relative of his,
who hinted that he had known of Vannina's projected flight. 'E tu hai
taciuto?' was Sampiero's only answer, accompanied by a stroke of his
poignard that killed the lukewarm cousin. Sampiero now brought his
wife from Aix to Marseilles, preserving the most absolute silence on
the way, and there, on entering his house, he killed her with his own
hand. It is said that he loved Vannina passionately; and when she was
dead, he caused her to be buried with magnificence in the church of S.
Francis. Like Giudice, Sampiero fell at last a prey to treachery. The
murder of Vannina had made the Ornani his deadly foes. In order to
avenge her blood, they played into the hands of the Genoese, and laid
a plot by