"As regards us, brave youths, none--I swear by the manes of our fathers!--not one will wait a second call; before the face of the world we must show that we deserve to be called brave. If foreigners land upon our coasts ready to give battle to uphold the pretensions of their allies, shall we who fight for our own welfare--for the welfare of our posterity--for the maintenance of the righteous and magnanimous resolutions of our fathers--shall we hesitate to defy all dangers, to risk, to sacrifice our lives? Brave fellow-citizens! liberty is our aim--and the eyes of all noble souls in Europe are upon us; they sympathize with us, they breathe prayers for the triumph of our cause. May our resolute firmness exceed their expectations! and may our enemies, by whatever name called, learn from experience that the conquest of Corsica is not so easy as it may seem! We who live in this land are freemen, and freemen can die!" CHAPTER XI. CORSICA UNDER PAOLI--TRAFFIC IN NATIONS--VICTORIES OVER THE FRENCH. All the thoughts and wishes of the Corsican people were thus directed towards a common aim. The spirit of the nation was vigorous and buoyant; ennobled by the purest love of country, by a bravery that had become hereditary, by the sound simplicity of the constitution, which was no artificial product of foreign and borrowed theorizings, but the fruit of sacred, native tradition. The great citizen, Pasquale Paoli, was the father of his country. Wherever he showed himself, he was met by the love and the blessings of his people, and women and gray-haired men raised their children and children's children in their arms, that they might see the man who had made his country happy. The seaports, too, which had hitherto remained in the power of Genoa, became desirous of sharing the advantages of the Corsican constitution. Disturbances occurred; Carlo Masseria and his son undertook to deliver the castle of Ajaccio into the hands of the Nationalists by stratagem. The attempt failed. The son was killed, and the father, who had already received his death-wound, died without a complaint, upon the rack. The Corsican people had now become so much stronger that, far from turning anxiously to some foreign power for aid, they found in themselves, not only the means of resistance, but even of attack and conquest. Their flag already waved on the waters of the Mediterranean. De Perez, a knight of Malta, was the admiral of their little fleet, which was occasioning the Genoese no small alarm. People said in Corsica that the position of the island might well entitle it to become a naval power--such as Greek islands in the eastern seas had formerly been; and a landing of the Corsicans on the coast of Liguria was no longer held impossible.