He did not speak of their passion for liberty, as a
man will not of what is holiest in his love. He had no need.
It spoke for itself in the ring of his voice, in the glooms and
lights of his eyes, as we lay on either side of our wood fire; and I
listened, till the embers died down, to the deeds of Jean Paul de
Leca, of Giudice della Rocca, of Bel Messer, of Sampiero di Ornano,
of the great Gaffori and other chiefs, all famous in their day, each
in his turn assassinated by Genoese gold. I heard of Venaco, where
the ghost of Bel Messer yet wanders, with the ghosts of his wife and
seven children drowned by the Genoese in the little lake of the Seven
Bowls. I heard of the twenty-one shepherds of Bastelica who marched
down from their mountains, and routed eight hundred Greeks and
Genoese of the garrison of Ajaccio; how at length they were
intercepted and slain between the river and the marshes--all but one
youth, who, stretched among his comrades and feigning death, was
taken and led to execution through the streets of the town, carrying
six heads, and each a kinsman's. I heard how Gaffori besieged his
own house; how the Genoese, having stolen his infant son, exposed the
child in the breach to stop the firing; and how Gaffori called to
them "I was a Corsican before I was a father," and the cannonade went
on, yet the child miraculously escaped unhurt.
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