§ 1
It was all like a picture some painter of an old and obvious school might have done. First, there was the port, with the white ships riding at their moorings in the blue sea. Then grayish white Marseilles, with its two immense ribbons, the Cannebière running northward, and the Rue de Rome and the Prado intersecting it. The great wooded amphitheater rising like a wave and little Notre Dame de la Garde peeking like a sentry out to sea. And eastward from the quays were the little jagged islands the Phenicians knew, If, and Rion, Jaros, strange un-French names ... the sunshine yellow as a lamp, and the sea blue as flax, and the green woods, and the ancient grayish white city—all a picture some unimaginative painter would have loved. Next to Belfast, Marseilles was to Shane Campbell a second home. There it was, like your own house!
Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he went ashore, the swarming, teeming life of it struck Shane like a current of air. Along the quays, along the Cannebière, was a riot of color and nationality unbelievable from on board ship. Here were Turks dignified and shy. Here were Greeks, wary, furtive. Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, Livonians, droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here were Algerians, black African folk, sneering, inimical. Here were Spaniards, with their walk like a horse's lope. Here were French business men, very important. Here were Provençals, cheery, short, tubby, excitable, olive-colored, black-bearded, calling to one another in the langue d'oc of the troubadours, "Té, mon bon! Commoun as? Quézaco?"
And the bustle of the shops and the bustle of cafés, until Shane was forced to go out to the olive-lined roads to the rocky summit of La Garde, and once there, as if drawn by a magnet, Shane would enter the chapel in the fort, where the most renowned Notre Dame of the Mediterranean smiles mawkishly in white olive-wood. After the blinding sun of the Midi, the cool dark chapel was like a dungeon to him, so little could he see anything; but in a while the strange furniture of the place would take form before his eyes: the white statue of the Virgin, the silver tunny-fish, the daubs of sea hazards whence the Virgin had rescued grateful mariners, the rope-ends, the crutches.... And though none might be in the chapel, yet it was full of life, so much did the pathetic ex-votos tell.... And he would come out of the chapel, and again the Midi sun would flash in a shower of gold, and he could see the blue Mediterranean, pricked with minute lateen-sails, and the grayish town beneath him, so old and yet so vital, and the calm harbor, with the forest of spars, and Monte Cristo, white as an egg....
A queer town that, as familiar as a channel marking, teeming as an ant-hill, and when darkness came over it, and he viewed it from the after deck, mystery came, too.... For a while there was a hush, and around the hills gigantic ghosts walked.... One thought of the Phocæans who had founded it, and to whom the Cannebière was a rope-walk, where they made the sheets for their ships.... And one thought of Lazarus, who had been raised from among the silent dead and who had come there, so legend read, a gray figure in ceramic garments, standing in the prow of a boat....
One thing Robin More had told him remained in his mind and captured his fancy, and that was that Pontius Pilate had been governor of Marseilles after his office in Judea. And of him Shane would think when the mysterious dusk came on the Midi hills ... Pilate, who had smiled, "What is truth?" and who had turned Christ over to the mob.... A big man, he imagined the Roman to have been, with clever eyes, and a great black beard covering a weak chin.... A man who knew all the subtleties of mind, and had no backbone.... And he could see the Roman, sitting on his villa porch in the dusk with tortured eyes, and fingering his beard with fingers that shook.... Paul was going through Greece and Rome like a flame, and the Pilate wondered.... Could it have been possible?... Ridiculous! a Jewish carpenter! A crazy man!.... And yet.... Could it have been possible.... No! no! no! And yet.... People had seen Him walk on the waves.... But people never knew what they saw, exactly.... No! How foolish!... He raised a man from the dead they said.... And that centurion—what was his name?—his daughter!... No, a stupid Jewish legend.... And yet.... Could it be possible? Could it? Could it?
"Lights! Lights! Do you hear me! Bring lights! Lights!" Pilate would all but scream, panic-stricken in the Midi dusk....
To Shane Campbell Marseilles had been all this for two years while he journeyed from Liverpool for silk and scented soaps—a landmark familiar as the Giant's Causeway, a strange, motley human circus, a veil behind which hid gigantic ghosts.... Until he met La Mielleuse on the road to Aix.