The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 5 | Page 6

which promises to surpass
in attractive interest anything Lamartine has given to the public in
many years, will be translated as rapidly as the advanced sheets of it are

received here, by Mr. Fayette Robinson, whose thorough apprehension
and enjoyment of the nicest delicacies of the French language, and free
and manly style of English, qualify him to do the fullest justice to such
an author and subject. His version of "Genevieve" will be issued, upon
its completion, by the publishers of The International. We give a
specimen of its quality in the following characteristic description, of
Marseilles, premising that the work is dedicated to "Mlle. Reine-Garde,
seamstress, and formerly a servant, at Aix, in Provence."
"Before I commence with the history of Genevieve, this series of
stories and dialogues used by country people, it is necessary to define
the spirit which animated their composition and to tell why they were
written. I must also tell why I dedicate this first story to Mlle.
Reine-Garde, seamstress and servant at Aix in Provence. This is the
reason.
"I had passed a portion of the summer of 1846 at that Smyrna of France,
called Marseilles, that city, the commercial activity of which has
become the chief ladder of national enterprise, and the general
rendezvous, of those steam caravans of the West, our railroads; a city
the Attic taste of which justifies it in assuming to itself all the
intellectual cultivation, like the Asiatic Smyrna, inherent in the memory
of great poets. I lived outside of the city, the heat of which was too
great for an invalid, in one of those villas formerly called bastides, so
contrived as to enable the occupants during the calmness of a summer
evening--and no people in the world love nature so well--to watch the
white sails and look on the motion of the southern breeze. Never did
any other people imbibe more of the spirit of poetry than does that of
Marseilles. So much does climate do for it.
"The garden of the little villa in which I dwelt opened by a gateway to
the sandy shore of the sea. Between it and the water was a long avenue
of plane trees, behind the mountain of Notre Dame de la Garde, and
almost touching the little lily-bordered stream which surrounded the
beautiful park and villa of the Borelli. We heard at our windows every
motion of the sea as it tossed on its couch and pillow of sand, and when
the garden gate was opened, the sea foam reached almost the wall of

the house, and seemed to withdraw so gradually as if to deceive and
laugh at any hand which would seek to bedew itself with its moisture. I
thus passed hour after hour seated on a huge stone beneath a fig-tree,
looking on that mingling of light and motion which we call the Sea.
From time to time the sail of a fisherman's boat, or the smoke which
hung like drapery above the pipe of a steamer, rose above the chord of
the arc which formed the gulf, and afforded a relief to the monotony of
the horizon.
"On working days, this vista was almost a desert, but when Sunday
came, it was made lively by groups of sailors, rich and idle citizens,
and whole families of mercantile men who came to bathe or rest
themselves, there enjoying the luxury both of the shade and of the sea.
The mingled murmur of the voices both of men, women and children,
enchanted with sunlight and with repose, united with the babbling of
the waves which seemed to fall on the shore light and elastic as sheets
of steel. Many boats either by sails or oars, were wafted around the
extremity of Cape Notre-Dame de la Garde, with its heavy grove of
shadowy pines; as they crossed the gulf, they touched the very margin
of the water, to be able to reach the opposite bank. Even the
palpitations of the sail were audible, the cadence of the oars,
conversation, song, the laughter of the merry flower and orange-girls of
Marseilles, those true daughters of the gulf, so passionately fond of the
wave, and devoted to the luxury of wild sports with their native
element were heard.
"With the exception of the patriarchal family of the Rostand, that great
house of ship-owners, which linked Smyrna, Athens, Syria and Egypt
to France by their various enterprises, and to whom I had been indebted
for all the pleasures of my first voyage to the East; with the exception
of M. Miege, the general agent of all our maritime diplomacy in the
Mediterranean, with the exception of Joseph Autran, that oriental poet
who refuses to quit his native region because he prefers his natural
elements to glory, I knew but few persons