and then from the rule of Francis I.; who
swept the Barbary corsairs from the seas; who beat the Turks in battles
on ship and on shore; who took Corsica from the French when he was
eighty-eight years old; who suffered from civil faction; who outlived
exile as he had outlived war, and who died at the age of ninety-four,
after he had refused the sovereignty of the country he had served so
long; who was the Washington of his day, and was equally statesman and
soldier, and, above all, patriot. It is his portrait that you see in
that old palace (called the Palace of the Prince because Charles V. had
called him Prince) overlooking the port, where he sits an old, old man,
very weary, in the sole society of his sarcastic cat, as I have noted
before. The cat seems to have just passed some ironical reflection on
the vanity of human things and to be studying him for the effect. Both
appear indifferent to the spectator, but perhaps they are not, and you
must not for all that fail of a visit to the Church of San Matteo, set
round with the palaces of the Doria family--the palace which his
grateful country gave the Admiral after he refused to be her master, and
the palaces of his kindred neighboring it round.
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