This is why—­because in Corsica your dead will not leave you alone--Dominic’s brother had to go into the maquis, into the bush on the wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for the insignificant remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his nephew with a mission to make a man of him.

No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined.  The very material for the task seemed wanting.  The Cervonis, if not handsome men, were good sturdy flesh and blood.  But this extraordinarily lean and livid youth seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail.

“Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother’s child from the cradle and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place,” Dominic would say to me.  “Look at him!  Just look at him!”

To look at Cesar was not pleasant.  His parchment skin, showing dead white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown hair, seemed to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones, Without being in any way deformed, he was the nearest approach which I have ever seen or could imagine to what is commonly understood by the word “monster.”  That the source of the effect produced was really moral I have no doubt.  An utterly, hopelessly depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that taken each separately had nothing positively startling.  You imagined him clammily cold to the touch, like a snake.  The slightest reproof, the most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate to which he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding teeth.

It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence, and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down.  It must not be imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault.  Dominic’s brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly like a ninepin—­which was funny to see.  But, once down, he would writhe on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage—­which was pretty horrible to behold.  And it also happened more than once that he would disappear completely--which was startling to observe.  This is the exact truth.  Before some of these majestic cuffs Cesar would go down and vanish.  He would vanish heels overhead into open hatchways, into scuttles, behind up-ended casks, according to the place where he happened to come into contact with his uncle’s mighty arm.

Once—­it was in the old harbour, just before the Tremolino’s last voyage—­he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation.  Dominic and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had sneaked up behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections, he was a consummate eavesdropper and spy.  At the sound of the heavy plop alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic stepped quietly to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his nephew’s miserable head to bob up for the first time.