The man from- Paris gave part of the answer. "One mad Corsican was enough for Europe for five hundred years," was the phrase he had heard. The padrone understood. In England, Edward was dead but he had brought about the French and English treaties of finance, opening the way for the great companies to come together, fortunes made in India and Africa and the Suez. The pa&one, however, was Corsican. Beyond making profit from them, he had no use for the French, less so for the English. He not only refused to join the companies and the banks but he opposed them at every turn, instructing his sons to out- maneuver their competitors. The Matarese fortune blocked powerful men from carrying out their designs.
For the padrone it was all a great game. For the French and English companies, his playing was a great crime to be answered with greater crimes. The companies and their banks controlled their governments.
Courts of law and the police, politicians and statesmen, even kings and presidents-all were lackeys and servants to the men who possessed vast sums of money. It would never change. This was the beginning of his final madness. He would find a way to destroy the corruptors and the corrupted.
He would throw governments everywhere into chaos, for it was the political leaders who were the betrayers of trust. Without the cooperation of government officials his sons would be alive, his world as it was. And with governments in chaos, the companies and the banks would lose their protectors.
"They look for a mad Corsican," he screamed. "They will not find him, yet he will be there." We made a last trip to Rome-not as before, in finery and in carriages with silver wheels, but a's a humble man and woman staying in cheap lodgings in the Via Due Maccelli. The padrone spent days prowling the Borsa Valort, reading the histories of the great families who had come to ruin.
We returned to Corsica. He composed five letters to five men known to be alive in five countries, inviting them to journey in secrecy to Porto Vecchio on matters of the utmost urgency, matters pertaining to their own personal histories.
He was the once-great Guillaume de Matarese. None refused.
The preparations were mqgnificent, Villa Matarese made more beautiful than it had ever been. The gardens were sculptured and bursting with color, the lawns greener than a brown cat's eyes, the great house and the stables washed in white, the horses curried until they glistened. It was a fairyland again, the padrone running everywhere at once, checking all things, demanding perfection. His great vitality had returned, but it was not the vitality we had known before. There was a cruelty in him now. "Make them remember, my child," he roared at me in the bedroom. "Make them remember what once was theirs!" For he came back to my bed, but his spirit was not the same. There was only brute strength in the performance of his manhood, there was no joy.
If all of us-in the house and the stables and in the fields-knew then what we soon would learn, we would have killed him in the forest. 1, who had been given everything by the great padrone, who worshiped him as both father and lover, would have plunged in the knife myself.
The great day came, the ships sailed in at dawn from Lida di Ostia, and the carriages were sent down to Porto Vecchio to bring up the honored guests to Villa Matarese. It was a glorious day, music in the gardens, enormous tables heaped with delicacies, and much wine. The finest wines from all Europe, stored for decades in the padrone's cellars.
The honored guests were given their own suites, each with a balcony and a magnificent view, and-not the least-each guest was provided with his own young whore for an afternoon's pleasure. Like the wines they were the flnest, not of Europe, but of southern Corsica. Five of the most beautiful virgins to be found in the hills.
Night came and the grandest banquet ever seen at Villa Matarese was held in the great hall. When it was over, the servants placed bottles of brandy in front of the guests and were told to remain in the kitchens.
The musicians were ordered to take their instruments into the gardens and continue playing. We girls were asked to go to the upper house to await our masters.