On one occasion Paoli received in this Palazzo Nazionale a very splendid embassy. A ship of Tunis had stranded on the coast of Balagna, and Paoli had not only restored to the shipwrecked strangers all the property of which the peasantry of the region had deprived them, but hospitably entertained them, and sent them home to the Bey of Tunis under the conduct of two officers, and well supplied with every necessary for their journey. The Bey thereupon sent an embassy to Paoli to thank him, and convey to him the assurance that he would remain eternally his and his country's friend, and that no Corsican would ever sustain injury within the bounds of his territories. The ambassador from Tunis kneeled down before Paoli, and, putting his hand to his forehead, said in Italian, _Il Bey ti saluta, e ti vuol bene_—the Bey greets thee, and wishes thee well. He brought him as presents, a beautiful, splendidly caparisoned horse, two ostriches, a tiger, a sabre set with diamonds; and after residing some days in Corte, returned again to Africa. Close to Corte lies the old convent of the Franciscans—a ruin of considerable size. In Paoli's time, the Corsican parliament assembled in the church of this convent; and from its pulpit not a few noble patriots have lifted their earnest voices. Many and not vain sacrifices were made to liberty in this church, and her name was not heard as an empty phrase. Those who called upon it, also died for it. In the year 1793, a general assembly of the Corsicans had met on the open ground before the convent; the time was stormy, for the grayhaired Paoli stood impeached of high treason by the National Convention of France. Pozzo di Borgo, that unrelenting enemy of Napoleon—like him, a citizen of Ajaccio—climbed upon a tree, and delivered a powerful and fiery speech in defence of Paoli, whose accusers, the furious clubbists, Arena and the Bonapartes, were here declared infamous. At the present day, wandering about in the streets of the little city, which are silent as the grave, and beneath whose shady elms here and there, poor-looking Corsicans idle in dreamy listlessness, one can hardly believe that scarcely a hundred years ago such an obscure, secluded nook was the seat of the most enlightened political wisdom of the age.