The “_Prud’hommes_” of Marseilles still exist as an institution, but their picturesque costume of other days has, it is needless to say, disappeared. The old-time “_Prud’homme_,” with a Henri Quatre mantle, a velvet toque for a hat, and a two-handed sword, would be a strange figure on the streets of up-to-date Marseilles. The amateur fisherman in France is not the minor factor that English Nimrods would have one believe, though the mere taking of fish is a side issue with him. Not always does he make of it a solitary occupation. At Marseilles he has his “fishing excursions” and his “chowder-parties,” and the deep-sea fishing bouts held off the Provençal coast would do credit to a Rockaway skipper. Read the following announcement of the banquet of “La Société de Pêche la Girelle” of Marseilles, culled from a morning paper: “Members will meet at six o’clock in the morning, and will leave for the Planier (Marseilles’ great far-reaching light) grounds ‘_sur le bateau à vapeur le Cannois_;’ the overflow in small boats. To return at noon for a grand banquet _chez_ Mistral. _Bouillabaisse et toute le reste_.” Another great passion of the Marseillais, of all classes, is for the “_campagne_.” The wealthy _commerçant_ has his sumptuous villa--always gaily built, but a sad thing from an architectural point of view--in the valley of the Huveaune, or on the slopes of the “Corniche” overlooking the Mediterranean. The _petit bourgeois_, the shopkeeper or the man of small affairs, contents himself with a _cabanon_, but it is his _maison de campagne_ just the same. It is merely a stone hut with a tiny terrace fronting it on the sunny side, sheltered by a _tonnelle_, and that is all. The proprietor of this grand affair spends his Sundays and his fête-days throughout the year here on the slope of some rocky hill overlooking the sea, sleeps on a camp bedstead, and goes out early in the morning _pour la pêche_, in the hope of taking fish enough to make his _bouillabaisse_. Probably he will catch nothing, but he will have his _bouillabaisse_ just the same, even if he has to go back to town to get it in a quayside restaurant. This is a simple and healthful enough way to spend one’s time assuredly, so why cavil at it, in spite of its ludicrous and juvenile side,--a sort of playing at housekeeping. The _cabanons_ are numerous for miles around Marseilles in every direction, above all on the hills overlooking the sea and in the valleys of the Oriol, the Berger, and the Huveaune, in fact, in any ravine where one may gain a foothold and hire a _pied-de-terre_ for fifty to a hundred francs a year.