Crude in colour, sombre, taciturn, Corsica, as Mérimée here describes it, is like the national passion of the Corsican--that morbid personal pride, usurping the place even of grief for the dead, which centuries of traditional violence had concentrated into an all- absorbing passion for bloodshed, for bloody revenges, in collusion with the natural wildness, and the wild social condition of the island still unaffected even by the finer ethics of the duel.
The supremacy of that passion is well indicated by the cry, put into the mouth of a young man in the presence of the corpse of his father deceased in the course of nature--a young man meant to be commonplace.
"Ah! Would thou hadst died malamorte--by violence! We might have avenged thee!"
The supremacy of that passion is well indicated by the cry, put into the mouth of a young man in the presence of the corpse of his father deceased in the course of nature--a young man meant to be commonplace.
"Ah! Would thou hadst died malamorte--by violence! We might have avenged thee!"