Colomba — A Reader’s Guide

“These French soldiers all have a good appearance,” remarked the colonel in English to his daughter, “and so it is easy to turn them into officers.” Then addressing the young man in French, he said, “Tell me, my good man, what regiment have you served in?” The young man nudged his second cousin’s godson’s father gently with his elbow, and suppressing an ironic smile, replied that he had served in the Infantry of the Guard, and that he had just quitted the Seventh Regiment of Light Infantry.

“Were you at Waterloo? You are very young!”

“I beg your pardon, colonel, that was my only campaign.”

“It counts as two,” said the colonel.

The young Corsican bit his lips.

“Papa,” said Miss Lydia in English, “do ask him if the Corsicans are very fond of their Buonaparte.”

Before the colonel could translate her question into French, the young man answered in fairly good English, though with a marked accent:

“You know, mademoiselle, that no man is ever a prophet in his own country. We, who are Napoleon’s fellow-countrymen, are perhaps less attached to him than the French. As for myself, though my family was formerly at enmity with his, I both love and admire him.”

“You speak English!” exclaimed the colonel.

“Very ill, as you may perceive!”

Miss Lydia, though somewhat shocked by the young man’s easy tone, could not help laughing at the idea of a personal enmity between a corporal and an emperor. She took this as a foretaste of Corsican peculiarities, and made up her mind to note it down in her journal.

“Perhaps you were a prisoner in England?” asked the colonel.

“No, colonel, I learned English in France, when I was very young, from a prisoner of your nation.”

Then, addressing Miss Nevil:

“Mattei tells me you have just come back from Italy. No doubt, mademoiselle, you speak the purest Tuscan--I fear you’ll find it somewhat difficult to understand our dialect.”

“My daughter understands every Italian dialect,” said the colonel. “She has the gift of languages. She doesn’t get it from me.”

“Would mademoiselle understand, for instance, these lines from one of our Corsican songs in which a shepherd says to his shepherdess:

“S’entrassi ‘ndru paradisu santu, santu, E nun truvassi a tia, mi n’escriria.”

(“If I entered the holy land of paradise and found thee not, I would depart!”)

--_Serenata di Zicavo_.

Miss Lydia did understand. She thought the quotation bold, and the look which accompanied it still bolder, and replied, with a blush, “Capisco.”

“And are you going back to your own country on furlough?” inquired the colonel.

“No, colonel, they have put me on half-pay, because I was at Waterloo, probably, and because I am Napoleon’s fellow-countryman. I am going home, as the song says, low in hope and low in purse,” and he looked up to the sky and sighed.

The colonel slipped his hand into his pocket, and tried to think of some civil phrase with which he might slip the gold coin he was fingering into the palm of his unfortunate enemy.

“And I too,” he said good-humouredly, “have been put on half-pay, but your half-pay can hardly give you enough to buy tobacco! Here, corporal!” and he tried to force the gold coin into the young man’s closed hand, which rested on the gunwale of the gig.

The young Corsican reddened, drew himself up, bit his lips, and seemed, for a moment, on the brink of some angry reply. Then suddenly his expression changed and he burst out laughing. The colonel, grasping his gold piece still in his hand, sat staring at him.

“Colonel,” said the young man, when he had recovered his gravity, “allow me to offer you two pieces of advice--the first is never to offer money to a Corsican, for some of my fellow-countrymen would be rude enough to throw it back in your face; the second is not to give people titles they do not claim. You call me ‘corporal,’ and I am a lieutenant--the difference is not very great, no doubt, still----”

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” exclaimed Sir Thomas. “But the skipper told me you were a corporal, and that your father and all your family had been corporals before you!”

At these words the young man threw himself back and laughed louder than ever, so merrily that the skipper and his two sailors joined the chorus.