travels, literature, and commerce.

"Commerce at Marseilles is not a matter of paltry traffic, or trifling
parsimony and retrenchments of capital. Marseilles looks on all
questions of commerce as a dilation and expansion of French capital,
and of the raw material exported and imported from Europe and Asia.
Commerce at Marseilles is a lucrative diplomacy, at the same time,
both local and national. Patriotism animates its enterprises, honor
floats with its flag, and policy presides over every departure. Their
commerce is one eternal battle, waged on the ocean at their own peril
and risk, with those rivals who contend with France for Asia and
Africa, and for the purpose of extending the French name and fame over
the opposite continents which touch on the Mediterranean.

"One Sunday, after a long excursion on the sea with Madame Lamartine,
we were told that a woman, modest and timid in her deportment, had
come in the diligence from Aix to Marseilles, and for four or five
hours had been waiting for us in a little orange grove next between
the villa and the garden. I suffered my wife to go into the house, and
passed myself into the orange grove to receive the stranger. I had
no acquaintance with any one at Aix, and was utterly ignorant of the
motive which could have induced my visitor to wait so long and so
patiently for me.

"When I went into the orange grove, I saw a woman still youthful, of
about thirty-six or forty years of age. She wore a working-dress which
betokened little ease and less luxury, a robe of striped _Indienne_,
discolored and faded; a cotton handkerchief on her neck, her black
hair neatly braided, but like her shoes, somewhat soiled by the dust
of the road. Her features were fine and graceful, with that mild