thought I might live long, and I have, for thirty years, like a tree."

Which was nearly true, for his life must have been somewhere midway
between the human and the vegetable.

"But why, my God!" cried Lory, impatiently, "why have you done it?"

"Why?" echoed the count, in his calm and suppressed way. "Why? Because I
am a Corsican, and am not to be frightened into leaving the country by a
parcel of Peruccas. They are no better than the Luccans you see working
in the road, and the miserable Pisans who come in the winter to build the
terraces. They are no Corsicans, but come from Pisa."

"But if they thought you were dead, what satisfaction could there be in
living on here?"

But the count only looked at his son in silence. He did not seem to
follow the hasty argument. He had the placid air of a child or a very old
man, who will not argue.

"Besides, Mattei Perucca is dead."

"So they say. So Jean tells me. I have not seen the abbe lately. He does
not dare to come more often than once in three months--four times a year.
Mattei Perucca dead!" He shook his head with the odd, upward jerk and the
weary smile. "I should like to see his carcass," he said.

Then, after a pause, he went back to his original train of thought.

"We are different," he said. "We are Corsicans. It was only when the