The exaggerated tone of this complaint diminished its effect.  The colonel wrote to the prefect and to the public prosecutor.  One of his wife’s kinsmen was related to one of the deputies of the island, another was cousin to the president of the Royal Court.  Thanks to this interest, the plot faded out of sight, Signora della Rebbia was left quiet in the wood, and the idiot alone was sentenced to a fortnight’s imprisonment.

Lawyer Barricini, dissatisfied with the result of this affair, turned his batteries in a different direction.  He dug out some old claim, whereby he undertook to contest the colonel’s ownership of a certain water-course which turned a mill-wheel.  A lawsuit began and dragged slowly along.  At the end of twelve months, the court was about to give its decision, and according to all appearances in favour of the colonel, when Barricini placed in the hands of the public prosecutor a letter, signed by a certain Agostini, a well-known bandit, threatening him, the mayor, with fire and sword if he did not relinquish his pretensions.  It is well known that in Corsica the protection of these brigands is much sought after, and that, to oblige their friends, they frequently intervene in private quarrels.  The mayor was deriving considerable advantage from this letter, when the business was further complicated by a fresh incident.  Agostini, the bandit, wrote to the public prosecutor, to complain that his handwriting had been counterfeited, and his character aspersed, by some one who desired to represent him as a man who made a traffic of his influence.  “If I can discover the forger,” he said at the end of his letter, “I will make a striking example of him.”

It was quite clear that Agostini did not write the threatening letter to the mayor.  The della Rebbia accused the Barricini of it and vice versa.  Both parties broke into open threats, and the authorities did not know where to find the culprit.

In the midst of all this Colonel Ghilfuccio was murdered.  Here are the facts, as they were elicited at the official inquiry.  On the 2d of August, 18—­, toward nightfall, a woman named Maddalena Pietri, who was carrying corn to Pietranera, heard two shots fired, very close together, the reports, as it seemed to her, coming from the deep lane leading to the village, about a hundred and fifty paces from the spot on which she stood.  Almost immediately afterward she saw a man running, crouching along a footpath among the vines, and making for the village.  The man stopped for a minute, and turned round, but the distance prevented the woman Pietri from seeing his features, and besides, he had a vine-leaf in his mouth, which hid almost the whole of his face.  He made a signal with his head to some comrade, whom the witness could not see, and then disappeared among the vines.