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 are going now, the enormous sums M. Jansoulet has spent during the last five months—­not to count what came from the outside, attracted by the magic of his name?  I thought, as you did, that all these soundings, borings, purchasings of land that the books set forth in fine round-hand were exaggerated beyond measure.  But who could suspect such effrontery?  This is why the director was so opposed to the idea of bringing me on the electioneering trip.  I don’t want to have an explanation now.  My poor Nabob has quite enough trouble in this election.  Only, whenever we get back, I shall lay before him all the details of my long inquiry, and, whether he wants it or not, I will get him out of this den of thieves.  They have finished below.  Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, pulling up the slip-knot of his long peasant’s purse, which looks to me well filled.  The bargain is made, I conclude.  Good-bye, hurriedly, my dear M. Joyeuse; remember me to your daughters and ask them to keep a tiny little place for me round the work-table.

PAUL DE GERY.

The electioneering whirlwind which had enveloped them in Corsica, crossed the sea behind them like a blast of the sirocco and filled the flat in the Place Vendome with a mad wind of folly.  It was overrun from morning to night by the habitual element, augmented now by a constant arrival of little dark men, brown as the locust-bean, with regular features and thick beards, some turbulent and talkative, like Paganetti, others silent, self-contained and dogmatic:  the two types of the race upon which the same climate produces different effects.  All these famished islanders, in the depths of their savage country, promised each other to meet at the Nabob’s table.  His house had become an inn, a restaurant, a market-place.  In the dining-room, where the table was kept constantly laid, there was always to be found some newly arrived Corsican, with the bewildered and greedy appearance of a country cousin, having something to eat.