Half an hour's walk along the high-road brought us to the solitary building of which we were in search. Uniting the character of an _albergo_ and a fortified post, of which there are several scattered throughout the island on commanding spots, the loop-holed walls, with projecting angles for a cross-fire, and the barrack round a court within, still occupied by a small party of _gendarmes_, were striking mementos of the state of insecurity in Corsica, and what travelling was at no very distant period. Shut in by the mountains, the air of the valley is close and stifling, disease marked the countenances of the few inmates, and the barrack-room into which we climbed, with its benches and tables, were all miserably dirty. The promise of a dish of fresh trout from the Golo was a redeeming feature in the aspect of affairs to one who had waited long, and walked far, without his breakfast. But the dish reeked as if the Golo ran oil, and the fish were still floating in the unctuous stream, spite of my injunctions to the weird priestess of the mysteries of the cave beneath—“_Senza olio, senza olio_,” reversing the phrase in the Baron de Grimm's story of the Frenchman, who, having sacrificed his own _goût_ to his guest's _penchant_ for asparagus _au naturel_, on his friend's falling down in a swoon, rushed to the top of the staircase, shouting to his cook, “_Tout à l'huile, tout à l'huile_.”
We stood on the bridge of Ponte Nuovo, just beneath the post, the scene of the last struggle for Corsican independence; and there Antoine pointed out the details. The Corsicans, under Pascal Paoli, having occupied the strong position in the Nebbio through which we had been rambling for the last few days, the Count de Vaux, the French generalissimo, concentrated his forces, amounting to forty-five battalions, four regiments of cavalry, and a powerful artillery, determined to crush Paoli's brave but ill-organised militia, and finish the war by a single blow. The French commenced the attack on the 3rd of May, 1769. For two days it was an affair of outposts, but, on the 3rd, De Vaux pressed Paoli with such vigour in his fortified camp at Murato, that the Corsican general was forced to retire beyond the Golo. He established himself in the _pieve_ of Rostino, a few miles above the bridge, leaving orders for Gaffori to hold the strong heights of Lento, while Grimaldi was to defend Canavaggia,—two points by which the French might penetrate into the interior. Bribed by French gold, Grimaldi—“_Ah! il traditore!_” exclaimed Antoine,—and Gaffori, unmindful of his honourable name, offered no resistance to the advance of the French.