New harbour works have been constructed, and sailing-ships have mostly given way to great steamers, but the channel winds and twists as of old under the lofty brow, capped by the sailors’ church of Notre Dame de la Garde, which is to-day a tawdry, bizarre shrine, as compared with the motive which inspired the devout to ascend its heights to pray for those who go down to the sea in ships.
Marseilles, of all cities of France, more even than Bordeaux or Lyons, is possessed of that individuality which stands out strong on the background of France—the land and the nation.
In the commercial world its importance gives it a high rank, and its affaires are regulated by no clues sent each morning by post or by telegraph from the world’s other marts of trade. It has, moreover, in the Canebière, one of the truly great streets of the world. Dumas remarked it, and so, too, have many others, who know its gay cosmopolitan aspect at all the hours of day and night.
From “The Count of Monte Cristo,” the following lines describe it justly and truly, and in a way that fits it admirably, in spite of the fact that Dumas wrote of it as it was a hundred years ago:
“The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the stern, desiring to be put ashore at the Canebière. The two rowers bent to their work, and the little boat glided away as rapidly as possible in the midst of the thousand vessels which choke up the narrow way which leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of the harbour to the Quai d’Orléans.
“The ship-owner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he saw him spring out on the quai and disappear in the midst of the throng, which, from five o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night, choke up this famous street of La Canebière, of which the modern Phocéens are so proud, and say, with all the gravity in the world, and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, ‘If Paris had La Canebière, Paris would be a second Marseilles.’”
The Château d’If, far more than the island of Monte Cristo itself, is the locale which is mostly recalled with regard to the romance of “Monte Cristo.”
Dumas has, of course, made melodramatic use of it; in fact, it seems almost as if he had built the romance around its own restricted pied à terre, but, nevertheless, it is the one element which we are pleased to call up as representative of the story when mention is made thereof.
Not a line, not a word, is misplaced in the chapters in which Dumas treats of Dantès’ incarceration in his island prison. Description does not crowd upon action or characterization, nor the reverse.
“Through the grating of the window of the carriage, Dantès saw they were passing through the Rue Caisserie, and by the Quai St. Laurent and the Rue Taramis, to the port. They advanced toward a boat which a custom-house officer held by a chain near the quai. A shove sent the boat adrift, and the oarsman plied it rapidly toward the Pilon. At a shout the chain that closes the port was lowered, and in a second they were outside the harbour.... They had passed the Tête de More, and were now in front of the lighthouse and about to double the battery.... They had left the isle Ratonneau, where the lighthouse stood, on the right, and were now opposite the Point des Catalans.