We arrived at Martigues in the early morning hours affected by automobilists, having spent the night a dozen miles or so away in the château of a friend. Our host made an early start on a shooting expedition, already planned before we put in an appearance, so we took the road at the witching hour of five A. M., and descended upon the Hôtel Chabas at Martigues before the servants were up. Some one had overslept. However, we gave the great door of the stable a gentle shake; it opened slowly, but silently, and we drove the automobile noisily inside. Two horses stampeded, a dog barked, a cock crowed, and sleepy-headed old Pierre appeared, saying that they had no room, forgetful that another day was born, and that he had allowed two fat commercial travellers, who were to have left by the early train, to over-sleep. [Illustration: _Église de la Madeleine, Martigues_] As there was likely to be room shortly, we convinced Pierre (whose name was really Pietro, he being an Italian) of the propriety of making us some coffee, and then had leisure to realize that at last we were at Martigues--“La Venise Provençale.” Martigues is a paradise for artists. So far as its canals and quays go, it is Venice without the pomp and glory of great palaces; and the life of its fishermen and women is quite as picturesque as that of the Giudecca itself. Wonderful indeed are the sunsets of a May evening, on Martigues’s Canal and Quai des Bourdigues, or from the ungainly bridge which crosses to the Ferrières quarter, with the sky-scraping masts of the _tartanes_ across the face of the sinking sun like prison bars. Great ungainly tubs are the boats of the fisherfolk of Martigues (all except the _tartanes_, which are graceful white-winged birds). The motor-boat has not come to take the picturesqueness away from the slow-moving _bêtes_, which are more like the dory of the Gloucester fishermen, without its buoyancy, than anything else afloat. Before the town, though two or three kilometres away, is the Mediterranean, and back of it the Étang de Berre, known locally as “La Petite Mer de Berre.” Here is a little corner of France not yet overrun by tourists, and perhaps it never will be. Hardly out of sight from the beaten track of tourist travel to the south of France, and within twenty odd miles of Marseilles, it is a veritable “darkest Africa” to most travellers. To be sure, French and American artists know it well, or at least know the lovely little triplet town of Martigues, through the pictures of Ziem and Galliardini and some others; but the seekers after the diversions of the “Côte d’Azur” know it not, and there are no tea-rooms and no “_bière anglaise_” in the bars or cafés of the whole circuit of towns and villages which surround this little inland sea.