On returning to the Étang, and after passing several perilously perched hillside villages, one comes suddenly to Marignane, a name which is little known or recognized. The town is very contracted, and it is wofully lacking in every modern convenience, except the electric light, which, curiously enough, its more opulent neighbour, Martigues, lacks. Marignane preserves traces of the Roman occupation, though what its status among the cities of the ancient Provincia may have been will perhaps ever remain in doubt. Principally it will be loved for its château of Renaissance times, which belonged to Mirabeau’s mother, who was of the seigneurial family of Marignane. It is not a remarkably beautiful building, but it is a satisfactory one in every way, and, though now in a state of decrepitude, it is a monumental reminder of other days and other ways. The Hôtel de Ville occupies the old château, but nothing very lively ever takes place there except the civil marriages of the commune, participants in which would, it seems, rather have the knot tied there than in any other similar edifice. Only the façade misses being a ruin, but all parts preserve the elegance--in suggestion, at least--of its former glory, and the great state chamber has been well preserved and cared for. Formerly the town had the usual fortifications with which important mediæval cities were surrounded, but they have now disappeared, and one will have to turn his steps to Salon for any ruins that suggest feudalism. There has ever been a contention between archæologists and historians as to the exact location of the Maritima of Pliny and Ptolemy, a designation given to a colony of Avatici, in the days when the sea power of the Greeks and Romans seemed likely never to wane. The question is still unsettled and crops up again and again. Marignane, on the shores of the Étang de Bolmon,--an offshoot of that wonderfully fascinating Étang de Berre,--was, perhaps, the ancient Maritima Colonia Avaticorum, and Martigues, its grander and better known neighbour, may have borne the title of Maritima Colonia Anatiliorum. As a mere matter of title, it is a fine distinction anyway, but everything points to the fact that the ancients had a great port somewhere on the shores of this landlocked Étang. Just where this may have been, and what its name was, is not so clear to-day, for there is scarcely more than a dozen feet of water in the shallow parts of the Étang, and this fact of itself would seem to preclude that it was ever a rival of the great ports of the Mediterranean of other days. The speculation, at any rate, will give food for thought to any who are interested, and whether this same Étang ever becomes, as is prophesied, a great series of ports and docks which will more than rival Marseilles, does not matter in the least. To-day the Étang de Berre is quite unspoiled in all the charm and novelty of its environment and of the little salt-water towns which surround it. CHAPTER VII.