In his charming romance, "Colomba," M.Prosper Merimee has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for attack or defence.

Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched.

If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab--first warning that there had been underhand play.

The deed always preceded the word.
In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were despised, where woman was mainly a drudge and man a conspirator, there grew up the typical Corsican temperament, moody and exacting, but withal keen, brave, and constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school for the glorification of the family and the clan[2].

Of this type Napoleon was to be the supreme exemplar; and the fates granted him as an arena a chaotic France and a distracted Europe.
Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes passed their lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.