This great beacon by land and sea, rising as it does to a height of considerably over five hundred feet, is the point of departure of that great deep-sea traffic which goes on so continually from the great port of Marseilles. An enthusiastic and imaginative Frenchman puts it as follows--and it can hardly be improved upon: “_Adieu! tu gardes jalousement ta couronne de reine de la mer._” [Illustration: _Environs of Marseilles_] Of all the points of sentimental and romantic interest at Marseilles and in its neighbourhood, the Château d’If will perhaps most strongly impress itself upon the mind and memory. The Quartier des Catalans and the Château d’If are indeed the chief recollections which most people have of the city of the Phoceans, as well as of the romance of “Monte Cristo.” [Illustration: _Château d’If_] The descriptions in the first pages of this wonderful romance could not be improved upon in the idea they convey of what this grim fortress was like in the days when the great Napoleon was languishing at Elba. Little is changed to-day so far as the general outlines are concerned. The little islet lies off the harbour’s mouth scarce the proverbial stone’s throw, and visitors come and go and poke their heads in and out of the sombre galleries and dungeons, asking the guardian, meanwhile, if they are really those of which Dumas wrote. History defines it all with even more accuracy than does romance, for one may recall that the prison was one time the cage of the notorious Marquis de la Valette, the “Man of the Iron Mask,” and many others. One’s mind always turns to Dantes and the gentle Abbé Faria, however, and your cicerone with great coolness tells you glibly, and with perfect conviction, just what apartments they occupied. You may take his word, or you may not, but it is well to recall that the Abbé Faria was no mythical character, though he never was an occupant of the island prison in which Dumas placed him. The real Abbé Faria was a metaphysicist and a hypnotist of the first rank in his day, and one feels that there is more than a suggestion of this--or of some somnambulistic foresight or prophecy--in the last speech which Dumas gives him when addressing Dantes: “_Surtout n’oubliez pas Monte Cristo, n’oubliez pas le trésor!_” Dumas’s own accounts of the Château d’If are indeed wonderful word-pictures, descriptive and narrative alike. It is romance and history combined in that wonderful manner of which Dumas alone was the master. The best guide, undoubtedly, to Château d’If is to be found in Chapters XIV., XV., XVII., and XX. of Dumas’s romance, though, truth to tell, the action of his plot was mostly imaginative and his scenario more or less artificial. As it rounded the Château d’If, a pilot boarded Dantes’s vessel, the _Pharaon_, between Cap Morgion and the Ile de Riou. “Immediately, the platform of Fort St. Jean was covered with onlookers, for it always was an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port.”