And an hour later he rode up to the Casa Perucca, having approached that
ancient house by a winding path from the valley below, instead of by the
high-road from the Col San Stefano to Olmeta, which runs past its very
gate. The Casa Perucca is rather singularly situated, and commands one of
the most wonderful views in this wild land of unrivalled prospects. The
high-road curves round the lower slope of the mountains as round the base
of a sugar-loaf, and is cut at times out of the sheer rock, while a
little lower it is begirt by huge trees. It forms as it were a cornice,
perched three thousand feet above the valley, over which it commands a
view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church,
and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is but
one spur--a vast buttress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, as
a buttress may be thrown against a church tower.

The Casa Perucca is built upon this spur of land, and the Perucca
estate--that is to say, the land attached to the Casa (for property is
held in small tenures in Corsica)--is all that lies outside the road. In
the middle ages the position would have been unrivalled, for it could be
attacked from one side only, and doubtless the Genoese Bank of St. George
must have had bitter reckonings with some dead and forgotten rebel, who
had his stronghold where the Casa now stands. The present house is
Italian in appearance--a long, low, verandahed house, built in two parts,
as if it had at one time been two houses, and only connected later by a
round tower, now painted a darker colour than the adjacent buildings.
There are occasional country houses like it to be found in Tuscany,
notably on the heights behind Fiesole.

The wall defining the peninsula is ten feet high, and is built actually
on the roadside, so that the Casa Perucca, with its great wooden gate,