The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively
recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the
stern islanders. In his charming romance, "Colomba," M. Prosper
Mérimée has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as
preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his
dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for
attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in
the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the
household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and
watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in
silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab--first
warning that there had been underhand play. The deed always preceded
the word.

In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were despised, where
woman was mainly a drudge and man a conspirator, there grew up the
typical Corsican temperament, moody and exacting, but withal keen,
brave, and constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school for
the glorification of the family and the clan[2]. Of this type Napoleon
was to be the supreme exemplar; and the fates granted him as an arena
a chaotic France and a distracted Europe.

Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes passed their lives
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Occupied as advocates
and lawyers with such details of the law as were of any practical
importance, they must have been involved in family feuds and the
oft-recurring disputes between Corsica and the suzerain Power, Genoa.
As became dignitaries in the municipality of Ajaccio, several of the
Buonapartes espoused the Genoese side; and the Genoese Senate in a
document of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jérome, "Egregius