"I have read in your garden and in your room, signore, the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, and some of the _Republic_ of Plato. You show me that you are the countryman of the great Pasquale." We talked long on a great variety of subjects--on civilisation and on barbarism, and how impotent theory was proving itself. But these are old affairs, that every reflecting man has thought of and talked about. Much musing on this interview, I went down to the grotto after taking leave of the singular man, who had realized for me so unexpectedly the creation of the poet. After all, this is a strange island. Yesterday a bandit who has murdered ten men out of _capriccio_, and is being led to the scaffold; to-day a practical philosopher, and philanthropic advocate of universal brotherhood--both equally genuine Corsicans, their history and character the result of the history of their nation. As I passed under the fair trees of the garden, however, I said to myself that it was not difficult to be a philanthropist in paradise. I believe that the wonderful power of early Christianity arose from the circumstance that its teachers were poor, probably unfortunate men. There is a Corsican tradition that St. Paul landed on Cape Corso--the Promontorium Sacrum, as it was called in ancient times--and there preached the gospel. It is certain that Cape Corso was the district of the island into which Christianity was first introduced. The little region, therefore, has long been sacred to the cause of philanthropy and human progress. The daughter of one of the gardeners led me to the grotto. It is neither very high nor very deep, and consists of a series of chambers, easily traversed. Lamps hung from the roof. The girl lighted them, and left me alone. And now a pale twilight illuminated this beautiful crypt, of such bizarre stalactite formations as only a Gothic architect could imagine--in pointed arches, pillar-capitals, domed niches, and rosettes. The grottos of Corsica are her oldest Gothic churches, for Nature built them in a mood of the most playful fantasy. As the lamps glimmered, and shone on, and shone through, the clear yellow stalactite, the cave was completely like the crypt of some cathedral. Left in this twilight, I had the following little fantasy in stalactite--