in a gambling hell, with some soldiers, who called him a Corsican goatherd, and other insulting names.  He drew his sword, but being only one against three, he would have fared very ill if a stranger, who was playing in the same room, had not exclaimed, “I, too, am a Corsican,” and come to his rescue.  This stranger was one of the Barricini, who, for that matter, was not acquainted with his countryman.  After mutual explanations, they interchanged courtesies and vowed eternal friendship.  For on the Continent, quite contrary to their practice in their own island, Corsicans quickly become friends.  This fact was clearly exemplified on the present occasion.  As long as della Rebbia and Barricini remained in Italy they were close friends.  Once they were back in Corsica, they saw each other but very seldom, although they both lived in the same village; and when they died, it was reported that they had not spoken to each other for five or six years.  Their sons lived in the same fashion—­“on ceremony,” as they say in the island; one of them Ghilfuccio, Orso’s father, was a soldier; the other Giudice Barricini, was a lawyer.  Having both become heads of families, and being separated by their professions, they scarcely ever had an opportunity of seeing or hearing of each other.

One day, however, about the year 1809, Giudice read in a newspaper at Bastia that Captain Ghilfuccio had just been decorated, and remarked, before witnesses, that he was not at all surprised, considering that the family enjoyed the protection of General -----.  This remark was reported at Vienna to Ghilfuccio, who told one of his countrymen that, when he got back to Corsica, he would find Giudice a very rich man, because he made more money out of the suits he lost than out of those he won.  It was never known whether he meant this as an insinuation that the lawyer cheated his clients, or as a mere allusion to the commonplace truth that a bad cause often brings a lawyer more profit than a good one.  However that may have been, the lawyer Barricini heard of the epigram, and never forgot it.  In 1812 he applied for the post of mayor of his commune, and had every hope of being appointed, when General ----- wrote to the prefect, to recommend one of Ghilfuccio’s wife’s relations.  The prefect lost no time in carrying out the general’s wish, and Barricini felt no doubt that he owed his failure to the intrigues of Ghilfuccio.  In 1814, after the emperor’s fall, the general’s protege was denounced as a Bonapartist, and his place was taken by Barricini.  He, in his turn, was dismissed during the Hundred Days, but when the storm had blown over, he again took possession, with great pomp, of the mayoral seal and the municipal registers.