statue of Notre Dame de la Garde. But if you arrive by road, as we did, your first impressions will be somewhat lacking in singular beauty. The outskirts of modern Marseille are not what Madame de Sévigné had in mind; they are dreary. Traffic is on several levels, darting in and out oftunnels and along overpasses through the kind of architecture that makes you want to take up demolition as a hobby.
Eventually, more by luck than a command of local geography, we managed to find our way to the old port, and the scenery took an instant turn for the better. There is always a magic about arriving in a city on the sea—the sudden unfolding of a long view to the horizon after congested streets, the change in the air from fumes to fresh brine, and, in Marseille, the hubbub of the fish-sellers drumming up trade.
They are there on the eastern side of the port from about eight o’clock each morning, rubber booted and leather faced, standing and shouting behind shallow boxes the size of small dining tables. The catch of the day, often still alive and kicking, shimmers in the sun, silver and gray and blue and red, the odd reproachful eye looking up at you as you walk by Pause for a second, and Madame—it seems that the husbands do the catching and their wives do the selling—plucks a fish from her tray and holds it under your nose. “Here,” she says, “smell the sea!” She gives the fish an appreciative slap, and it twitches. “I must be mad,” she says, “I’m selling a live one for the price of a dead one! Fish is good for your brain, fish is good for your love life,
venez, la mamie, venez!
” The customers look and sniff and buy, walking off with their blue plastic bags, the contents still flapping, held carefully away from their bodies.
In the harbor behind the stalls, the water is covered with a bobbing mosaic of boats, so closely moored that you feel you could walk several hundred yards out to sea without getting your feet wet. Floating gin palaces, day sailers, graceful yachts with the sheen of a dozen coats of varnish,and the fat-bellied ferries that will take you across the mile or so that separates the mainland from the bleak little island with the sinister reputation.
The Château d’If, an earlier version of Alcatraz, was built in the sixteenth century, and was used to keep undesirables at a safe distance from the city. A small consolation for the inmates was the clean sea air; a daily torment must have been the sight of Marseille—a picturesque view of liberty—across the water. It is a setting that could have been devised in a novel, and so it’s not surprising to learn that the Château d’If’s most famous prisoner, the Count of Monte Cristo, never existed. Alexandre Dumas
père
invented him, and lived to see his invention commemorated when the authorities, not wanting to disappoint Dumas’s readers, provided an official Count of Monte Cristo cell. But there was no shortage of genuine prisoners. At one time, thousands of Protestants were kept here before going on to become galley slaves. And, an example of the law being as absurd then as it often is today, there was the unfortunate Monsieur de Niozelles, who committed the unspeakable crime of failing to remove his hat in front of the king. Shock and horror ensued, followed by a sentence of six years in solitary confinement on the island. No wonder royalty came to a sticky end in France.
A short sea voyage, we thought, would be a bracing way to start the day, and we went to the quayside office to buy tickets for the ferry. The young man at the counter barely raised his head. “Not this morning,” he said. “The weather.”
The weather was ideal, sunny and mild. The ferry, which we could see behind him, looked substantial enough to cross the Atlantic, let alone the sheet of glassthat stretched between us and the Château d’If. What was the problem with the weather? we asked.
“The mistral.”
There was a hesitant breeze, no more. Certainly
Eventually, more by luck than a command of local geography, we managed to find our way to the old port, and the scenery took an instant turn for the better. There is always a magic about arriving in a city on the sea—the sudden unfolding of a long view to the horizon after congested streets, the change in the air from fumes to fresh brine, and, in Marseille, the hubbub of the fish-sellers drumming up trade.
They are there on the eastern side of the port from about eight o’clock each morning, rubber booted and leather faced, standing and shouting behind shallow boxes the size of small dining tables. The catch of the day, often still alive and kicking, shimmers in the sun, silver and gray and blue and red, the odd reproachful eye looking up at you as you walk by Pause for a second, and Madame—it seems that the husbands do the catching and their wives do the selling—plucks a fish from her tray and holds it under your nose. “Here,” she says, “smell the sea!” She gives the fish an appreciative slap, and it twitches. “I must be mad,” she says, “I’m selling a live one for the price of a dead one! Fish is good for your brain, fish is good for your love life,
venez, la mamie, venez!
” The customers look and sniff and buy, walking off with their blue plastic bags, the contents still flapping, held carefully away from their bodies.
In the harbor behind the stalls, the water is covered with a bobbing mosaic of boats, so closely moored that you feel you could walk several hundred yards out to sea without getting your feet wet. Floating gin palaces, day sailers, graceful yachts with the sheen of a dozen coats of varnish,and the fat-bellied ferries that will take you across the mile or so that separates the mainland from the bleak little island with the sinister reputation.
The Château d’If, an earlier version of Alcatraz, was built in the sixteenth century, and was used to keep undesirables at a safe distance from the city. A small consolation for the inmates was the clean sea air; a daily torment must have been the sight of Marseille—a picturesque view of liberty—across the water. It is a setting that could have been devised in a novel, and so it’s not surprising to learn that the Château d’If’s most famous prisoner, the Count of Monte Cristo, never existed. Alexandre Dumas
père
invented him, and lived to see his invention commemorated when the authorities, not wanting to disappoint Dumas’s readers, provided an official Count of Monte Cristo cell. But there was no shortage of genuine prisoners. At one time, thousands of Protestants were kept here before going on to become galley slaves. And, an example of the law being as absurd then as it often is today, there was the unfortunate Monsieur de Niozelles, who committed the unspeakable crime of failing to remove his hat in front of the king. Shock and horror ensued, followed by a sentence of six years in solitary confinement on the island. No wonder royalty came to a sticky end in France.
A short sea voyage, we thought, would be a bracing way to start the day, and we went to the quayside office to buy tickets for the ferry. The young man at the counter barely raised his head. “Not this morning,” he said. “The weather.”
The weather was ideal, sunny and mild. The ferry, which we could see behind him, looked substantial enough to cross the Atlantic, let alone the sheet of glassthat stretched between us and the Château d’If. What was the problem with the weather? we asked.
“The mistral.”
There was a hesitant breeze, no more. Certainly
Similar Books
