OLD MARSEILLES AT MIDDAY
October 10
Up every staircase-street—dark crevasses, pinched between tall, peeling cliffs; along the quay, flaunting, tattered, brawling colours, sweating and swarming with noisy life—negroes, Chinamen, Arabs, Lascars, Italians, Greeks—the angry hum of a thousand tongues and the clatter of straining mules.... At midday, when all the smooth stone pavement lies bathed in lusty sunshine, you may feel the pulse of old Marseilles quicken to fever-heat its turbulent throbbing....
Across the sea, polished as a pool of molten metal, the Southern sun strews his golden highway; the frail forest of masts stiffens, congealed like a fine etched pattern; side by side lie the herds of steamers, silent, drowsy, vermilion-bellied beasts; and over there, to the left, high above the city, the slim silhouette of Notre-Dame de la Garde shows a glimmer of dusky gilt....
Oh! for the crude crowd of blatant hues and the flood of fierce vitality that belong to old Marseilles at midday!