Marseilles

Marseilles is the great Mediterranean port of southern France, the city where the entire action of The Count of Monte Cristo originates and to which it periodically returns. It is the home of the shipping firm Morrel & Son, the base of the Pharaon, and the residence of the young sailor Edmond Dantes, his father, and his betrothed, Mercedes. The city's geography—its harbor, the Canebiere, the old quarter of the Catalans, and the nearby fortress of the Chateau d'If—provides the concrete, vivid setting for the novel's opening acts of happiness, betrayal, and imprisonment.

The Port and the Pharaon

The novel opens on the 24th of February, 1815, with the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalling the three-master, the Pharaon, as it arrives from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. The ship is a vessel of the Marseilles firm Morrel & Son, built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks. Its arrival is an event for the city, drawing spectators to the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean. The young mate, Edmond Dantes, skillfully handles the ship into the harbor, past the strait between the Calasareigne and Jaros islands, and rounds Pomegue before approaching the inner port. The shipowner, M. Morrel, impatient for news, rows out in a skiff to meet the vessel as it rounds into the La Reserve basin. This opening scene establishes Marseilles as a working port city, where a ship's arrival is a matter of public interest and where the fortunes of families like the Morrels are tied to the sea.

The City's Quarters and Landmarks

Marseilles is composed of distinct neighborhoods that define the social positions of its inhabitants. The Catalans is a separate village, a colony of Spanish origin that has preserved its own language and customs for centuries, living on a tongue of land without mixing with the Marseillaise population. It is here that Mercedes, a beautiful Catalan girl, lives in a sun-burned house with her cousin Fernand. The city proper contains the Rue de Noailles, where Dantes' father lives in a small room on the fourth floor of a house in the Allees de Meillan, a poor but respectable quarter. The Canebiere is the famous street, a bustling thoroughfare of which the modern Phocaeans boast, saying, "If Paris had La Canebiere, Paris would be a second Marseilles." The Palais de Justice, where Dantes is examined by the deputy procureur, M. de Villefort, adjoins the prison, a sombre edifice with grated windows looking onto the clock-tower of the Accoules. The city also contains the aristocratic mansions of the Rue du Grand Cours, where Villefort's betrothal feast to Renee de Saint-Meran is taking place at the same hour as Dantes' wedding feast.

The Chateau d'If and the Prison System

Just off the coast of Marseilles lies the Chateau d'If, a gloomy fortress on a black and frowning rock that has for more than three hundred years furnished food for wild legends. It is the state prison for political prisoners, and it is to this fortress that Dantes is secretly transported by boat after his arrest. The journey from the city to the prison is a short but terrifying one: Dantes is taken from the Palais de Justice, through the Rue Caisserie, the Rue Saint-Laurent, and the Rue Taramis to the port, where a boat awaits. He passes La Reserve, where his wedding feast was held, and sees the light from Mercedes' chamber in the Catalans before the boat rounds the Tete de Morte and heads out to sea. The prison itself is a place of utter despair, with damp, reeking dungeons where prisoners are forgotten. The sea around the Chateau d'If serves as its cemetery, as the bodies of dead prisoners are thrown into the water with a thirty-six pound shot tied to their feet.

The City's Role in the Plot

Marseilles is the locus of Dantes' initial happiness and his catastrophic downfall. It is where he is arrested at his wedding feast at La Reserve, where he is examined by Villefort, and from where he is transported to the Chateau d'If. It is also the city to which he returns, transformed into the Count of Monte Cristo, to begin his work of reward and punishment. He returns to the Canebiere, where he is not recognized by a former sailor of the Pharaon, and to the house in the Allees de Meillan where his father died of starvation. He purchases the house and visits the Catalans, leaving a new fishing boat for the family of a poor fisherman. The city is also the home of the Morrel family, whose shipping firm is saved from ruin by the count's anonymous intervention. The final act of the novel's Marseilles sequence sees the count visiting the old house of his father and the cemetery where his father is buried, before departing the city for the final time. The city thus serves as the bookend of Dantes' life, the place of his origin, his suffering, and his ultimate, ambiguous triumph.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Marseilles functions as the concrete, realistic anchor for the novel's sprawling, romantic plot. It is a place of clear social hierarchies, from the wealthy shipowners and magistrates to the poor fishermen and tailors. The city's geography—the port, the prison island, the distinct neighborhoods—provides a physical map of the social world Dantes inhabits and from which he is violently expelled. His return to Marseilles as the Count of Monte Cristo is a test of his transformation; the city that once knew him as a poor sailor now sees him as a mysterious, powerful foreigner. The city's role in the narrative is to establish the baseline of innocence and injustice against which the entire subsequent drama of revenge and reward is measured. It is the place where the promise of happiness is made and broken, and where, through the count's intervention, a form of justice is finally, if imperfectly, restored.