reflective and calm standpoint which is only to be enjoyed by the man who
has nothing to lose. To begin at Valentia, one will find these human
weeds almost Oriental in their apathy. Farther north, at Barcelona, they
are given to fitful lapses into activity before the heat of the day. At
Marseilles they are almost energetic, and are even known to take the
trouble of asking the passer for alms. But eastward, beyond Toulon, they
understand their business better, and do not even trouble to talk among
themselves. The French worth-nothing is, in a word, worth less than any
of his brothers--much less than the Italian, who is quite easily roused
to a display of temper and a rusty knife--and more nearly approaches the
supreme calm of the Moor, who, across the Mediterranean, will sit all day
and stare at nothing with any man in the world. And between these dreamy
coasts there lie half a dozen islands which, strange to say, are islands
of unrest. In Majorca every man works from morn till eve. In Minorca they
do the same, and quarrel after nightfall. In Iviza they quarrel all day.
In Corsica they do nothing, restlessly; while Sardinia, as all the world
knows, is a hotbed of active discontent.

At Ajaccio there are half a dozen idlers on the Place Bonaparte, who sit
under the trees against the wall; but they never sit there long, and do
not know their business. At St. Florent, in the north of the island,
which has a western aspect--the best for idling--there are but two real,
unadulterated knights of industry, who sit on the low wall of that which
is called the New Quay, and conscientiously do nothing from morning till
night.

"Of course I know him," one was saying to the other. "Do I not remember
his father, and are not all the de Vasselots cut with the same knife? I
tell you there was a moon, and I saw him get off his horse, just here at
the very door of Rutali's stable, and unstrap his sack, which he carried