ALASSIO, ELBA AND CORSICA 213 



Just around the corner from the house in which the 

 Bonapartes lived was the more stately residence of the 

 more aristocratic family of Pozzo di Borgo. It interested 

 me as the nest in which was reared that early playmate 

 and rival of Napoleon, who afterward became his most 

 virulent, persistent, and successful enemy, who pursued 

 him through his whole career as a hound pursues a wolf, 

 and who at last aided most effectively in bringing him 

 down. 



After exhausting the attractions of Ajaccio, we drove 

 up a broad, well-paved avenue, gradually rising and curv 

 ing until, at a distance of six or seven miles, it ended 

 at the country-seat of this same family of Pozzo di Borgo, 

 far up among the mountains. There, on a plateau com 

 manding an amazing view, and in the midst of a superb 

 park, we found the rural retreat of the family; but, to 

 our surprise, not a castle, not a villa, not like any other 

 building for a similar purpose in Italy or anywhere else 

 in the world, but a Parisian town house, recently erected 

 in the style of the Valois period, with Mansard roof. As 

 we approached it, I was struck by architectural details 

 even more at variance with the surroundings than was 

 the general style of the building: all its exterior decora 

 tion presenting the features of a pavilion from the old 

 Tuileries at Paris ; and in the garden hard by we found 

 battered and blackened fragments of pilasters, shown by 

 the emblems and ciphers upon them to have come from 

 that part of the Tuileries once inhabited by Napoleon. 

 The family being absent, we were allowed to roam through 

 the house, and there found the statues, paintings, tapes 

 tries, books, and papers of Napoleon s arch-enemy, the 

 great Pozzo di Borgo himself, all of them more or less 

 connected with the great struggle. There, too, in the li 

 brary were collected the decorations bestowed upon him 

 by all the sovereigns of Europe for his successful zeal in 

 hunting down the common enemy &quot; the Corsican Ogre.&quot; 

 The palace, inside and out, is a monument to the most 

 famous of Corsican vendettas. 



