This young man, people said to me, had not become a murderer from personal reasons of revenge, that is, in order to fulfil a Vendetta; he had become a bandit from ambition. His story throws a great deal of light on the frightful state of matters in the island. When Massoni was at the height of his fame [this man had avenged the blood of a relation, and then become bandit], Bracciamozzo, as the people began to call the young Giacomino, after his arm had been mutilated, carried him the means of sustenance: for these bandits have always an understanding with friends and with goat-herds, who bring them food in their lurking-places, and receive payment when the outlaws have money. Giacomino, intoxicated with the renown of the bold bandit Massoni, took it into his head to follow his example, and become the admiration of all Corsica. So he killed a man, took to the bush, and was a bandit. By and bye he had killed ten men, and the people called him Vecchio--the old one, probably because, though still quite young, he had already shed as much blood as an old bandit. One day Vecchio shot the universally esteemed physician Malaspina, uncle of a hospitable entertainer of my own, a gentleman of Balagna; he concealed himself in some brushwood, and fired right into the _diligenza_ as it passed along the road from Bastia. The mad devil then sprang back into the mountains, where at length justice overtook him. A career of this frightful description, then, is possible for a man in Corsica. Nobody there despises the bandit; he is neither thief nor robber, but only fighter, avenger, and free as the eagle on the hills. Hot-headed youths are fired with the thought of winning fame by daring deeds of arms, and of living in the ballads of the people. The inflammable temperament of these men--who have been tamed by no culture, who shun labour as a disgrace, and, thirsting for action, know nothing of the world but the wild mountains among which Nature has cooped them up within their sea-girt island--seems, like a volcano, to insist on vent. On another, wider field, and under other conditions, the same men who house for years in caverns, and fight with sbirri in the bush, would become great soldiers like Sampiero and Gaffori. The nature of the Corsicans is the combative nature; and I can find no more fitting epithet for them than that which Plato applies to the race of men who are born for war, namely, "impassioned."[E] The Corsicans are impassioned natures; passionate in their jealousy and in their pursuit of fame; passionately quick in honour, passionately prone to revenge. Glowing with all this fiery impetuosity, they are the born soldiers that Plato requires.