“Before I commence with the history of Genevieve, this series of stories and dialogues used by country people, it is necessary to define the spirit which animated their composition and to tell why they were written.  I must also tell why I dedicate this first story to Mlle. Reine-Garde, seamstress and servant at Aix in Provence.  This is the reason.

“I had passed a portion of the summer of 1846 at that Smyrna of France, called Marseilles, that city, the commercial activity of which has become the chief ladder of national enterprise, and the general rendezvous, of those steam caravans of the West, our railroads; a city the Attic taste of which justifies it in assuming to itself all the intellectual cultivation, like the Asiatic Smyrna, inherent in the memory of great poets.  I lived outside of the city, the heat of which was too great for an invalid, in one of those villas formerly called bastides, so contrived as to enable the occupants during the calmness of a summer evening—­and no people in the world love nature so well—­to watch the white sails and look on the motion of the southern breeze.  Never did any other people imbibe more of the spirit of poetry than does that of Marseilles.  So much does climate do for it.

“The garden of the little villa in which I dwelt opened by a gateway to the sandy shore of the sea.  Between it and the water was a long avenue of plane trees, behind the mountain of Notre Dame de la Garde, and almost touching the little lily-bordered stream which surrounded the beautiful park and villa of the Borelli.  We heard at our windows every motion of the sea as it tossed on its couch and pillow of sand, and when the garden gate was opened, the sea foam reached almost the wall of the house, and seemed to withdraw so gradually as if to deceive and laugh at any hand which would seek to bedew itself with its moisture.  I thus passed hour after hour seated on a huge stone beneath a fig-tree, looking on that mingling of light and motion which we call the Sea.  From time to time the sail of a fisherman’s boat, or the smoke which hung like drapery above the pipe of a steamer, rose above the chord of the arc which formed the gulf, and afforded a relief to the monotony of the horizon.

“On working days, this vista was almost a desert, but when Sunday came, it was made lively by groups of sailors, rich and idle citizens, and whole families of mercantile men who came to bathe or rest themselves, there enjoying the luxury both of the shade and of the sea.  The mingled murmur of the voices both of men, women and children, enchanted with sunlight and with repose, united with the babbling of the waves which seemed to fall on the shore light and elastic as sheets of steel.  Many boats either by sails or oars, were wafted around the extremity of Cape Notre-Dame de la Garde, with its heavy grove of shadowy pines; as they crossed the gulf, they touched the very margin of the water, to be able to reach the opposite bank.  Even the palpitations of the sail were audible, the cadence of the oars, conversation, song, the laughter of the merry flower and orange-girls of Marseilles, those true daughters of the gulf, so passionately fond of the wave, and devoted to the luxury of wild sports with their native element were heard.