We had not gone far before we met a funeral, which was so perfectly simple, matter-of-fact, and devoid of anything ostentatious or needless, that I thought it a model worthy of imitation in less primitive places. Two mules drew a rough cart, in which lay the corpse, uncoffined, and covered over with a gaudy-coloured shawl, which allowed the outlines of the human form beneath to be plainly visible. After the cart walked a dozen or so of people, betraying no emotion, but looking serious and stolid. No vestige of black was to be seen. They were dressed in their ordinary everyday garments, carrying the bright-hued umbrellas which are popular in the island, and the men having the customary wine-gourds slung round their bodies. About the whole thing there was an absence of fuss, ceremony, and demonstrativeness, combined with perfect gravity and propriety of demeanour, which made me wish that all arrangers of funerals would come and take a lesson at Zicavo. The only stop we made during the morning was at a tiny little village, where we waited a few minutes for the horses to be watered. Whilst this was done, the two ladies and I did not get out of the carriage, but sat where we were, drawn up outside a miserable tumble-down sort of hovel that did duty as an inn. The loungers of the hamlet soon gathered round to stare at us, and were joined by two men who issued from the house. They both had guns, as I saw; but there was nothing in the least remarkable about that, because a Corsican almost always carries a gun _or_ an umbrella, and sometimes both, so that their being armed did not at all astonish me. Nor did I think it in any way peculiar when I heard them ask our driver who we were, and where we were going. For I had by this time seen enough of Corsican inquisitiveness to regard such inquiries as a mere matter of course, and demonstrations of curiosity seemed to me more natural than their absence. The two men left the inn almost immediately after their questions had been answered. I saw them leave the village, and a little way farther on I caught a glimpse of them again turning off the road, and plunging into the thick bushes on either side. I concluded that they were a couple of "chasseurs," such as one sees perpetually in Corsica, and then thought no more about them.