When the evening sets in, the lighthouse of Bonifazio shows its light. The Sardinian coast is wrapt in darkness; but soon, from Longo Sardo, a red light replies, and so these two sister islands, as well by night as by day, maintain a friendly intercourse with their beacons. The warders on either side lead a lonely life. Each is the first or last inhabitant of his island. He of Bonifazio is the most southerly Corsican I have ever met with; and he of the cape opposite the most northerly Sardinian. They have never seen each other or conversed; but daily they interchange a beautiful good-evening—_felicissima notte_, as they say in Italy when the mistress brings in the light. The warder of Corsica is the first to bring out his light into the darkening night, and to say _felicissima notte_; then his brother warder of Sardinia comes to meet him, and also says his _felicissima notte_; and so they go on night after night, and will go on while life lasts, till some evening the beacon shall remain for a time unlighted. Then will the warder on this side know that his old friend on the other is dead; and with a tear perchance that night, he will say _felicissima notte_!
I visited this most southerly of Corsicans in his turret. It lies a league from Bonifazio, on the low Cape Pertusato. The south of Corsica runs out here into an obtuse triangle, at whose western extremity Cape Pertusato, and at whose eastern Cape Sprono lies—the latter a small rocky point, standing nearer to Sardinia than any other part of Corsica. With a favourable wind, one could be in Sardinia in half an hour. The little lighthouse is surrounded by a white wall, and resembles a fort. The keeper received me kindly, and set before me a glass of goat's milk. He lives like Æolus, in the wind. There is something strange in the thought, that the long years of a man's life all turn round an oil-lamp, and that it is a human being's sole destiny to burn a lamp-wick on a lonely cliff by night. There can be nothing apparently more unsatisfactory, and nothing more unpretending than such an existence.
The warder led me to the parapet of the lighthouse, where the violence of the wind compelled me to hold fast by the railing. From his roof-top he pointed out all his island domain and sovereignty, which consisted of thirty head of goats and a vineyard; and as I perceived that he was contented and possessed sufficient of the goods of the earth, I at once esteemed him happy, even before his death. He directed my attention to the majestic beauty of Sardinia, the islands and islets which swarm round it, Santa Maria and Santa Maddalena, the island Caprara, Reparata, and many more. The western mouth of the strait is strewn with insular rocks; the eastern is broader; and over against the Sardinian Cape Falcone lies the island Asènara, a picturesque ridge of hill.