The women’s lamentations grew louder, and the men’s curses deeper, when Orso’s house appeared in sight.  When some shepherds of the della Rebbia party ventured on a triumphant shout, their enemy’s indignation became ungovernable.  “Vengeance!  Vengeance!” exclaimed several voices.  Stones were thrown, and two shots, fired at the windows of the room in which Colomba and her guests were sitting, pierced the outside shutters, and carried splinters of wood on to the table at which the two ladies were working.  Miss Lydia screamed violently, the colonel snatched up a gun, and Colomba, before he could stop her, rushed to the door of the house and threw it violently open.  There, standing high on the threshold, with her two hands outstretched to curse her enemies: 

“Cowards!” she cried.  “You fire on women and on foreigners!  Are you Corsicans?  Are you men?  Wretches, who can only murder a man from behind.  Come on!  I defy you!  I am alone!  My brother is far away!  Come! kill me, kill my guests!  It would be worthy of you! . . .  But you dare not, cowards that you are!  You know we avenge our wrongs!  Away with you!  Go, weep like women, and be thankful we do not ask you for more blood!”

There was something terrible and imposing in Colomba’s voice and mien.  At the sight of her the crowd recoiled as though it beheld one of those evil fairies of which so many tales are told on long winter evenings, in Corsica.  The deputy-mayor, the gendarmes, and a few women seized the opportunity, and threw themselves between the two factions; for the della Rebbia herdsmen were already loading their guns, and for a moment a general fight in the middle of the square had appeared imminent.  But the two parties were both leaderless, and Corsicans, whose rage is always subject to discipline, seldom come to blows unless the chief authors of their internecine quarrels are present.  Besides, Colomba, who had learned prudence from victory, restrained her little garrison.

“Let the poor folks weep in peace,” she said.  “Let the old man carry his own flesh home.  What is the good of killing an old fox who has no teeth left to bite with, . . .  Giudice Barricini!  Remember the 2d of August!  Remember the blood-stained pocket-book in which you wrote with your forger’s hand!  My father had written down your debt!  Your sons have paid it.  You may go free, old Barricini!”

With folded arms and a scornful smile upon her lips, Colomba watched the bearers carry the corpses of her enemies into their home, and the crowd without it melt gradually away.  Then she closed her own door, and, going back into the dining-room, she said to the colonel: 

“I beg, sir, you will forgive my fellow-countrymen!  I never could have believed that any Corsican would have fired on a house that sheltered strangers, and I am ashamed of my country.”

That night, when Miss Lydia had gone up to her room, the colonel followed her, and inquired whether they had not better get out of a village where they ran incessant risk of having a bullet through their heads, the very next morning, and leave this country, seething with treachery and murder, as soon as possible.