Le Comte de Monte-Cristo

On 24 February 1815, Notre Dame de la Garde’s look-out reported the three-master Pharaon, coming from Smyrne, Trieste, and Naples.

As usual, a coastal pilot immediately left the port, skimmed past the Château d’If, and went to meet the ship between the cape of Morgion and the island of Rion.

Straightaway, also as usual, Fort Saint-Jean’s platform was covered in curious onlookers; the arrival of a ship is always a big deal in Marseilles, especially when that ship, like the Pharaon, was built, rigged, and stocked in old Phocaea’s shipyards, and belongs to a local shipowner.

Meanwhile this ship was advancing. It had successfully crossed the strait that some volcanic tremor had sunk between the islands of Calasareigne and Jaros; it had rounded Pomègue, and it was advancing under its three topsails, its big jib, and its spanker, but so slowly and with such a sad air that the onlookers, with that instinct that senses misfortune, wondered what accident could have occurred on board.

Nevertheless the navigation experts recognized that if an accident had occurred, it couldn’t have been to the ship itself, as it advanced with all the conditions of a perfectly steered ship: its anchor was in its casting, its bowsprit shrouds detached; and near the pilot, who was getting ready to guide the Pharaon through the narrow entry to Marseilles’s port, was a young man with quick gestures and alert eyes, who was watching each movement of the ship and repeating each of the pilot’s orders.

The vague uncertainty that hung over the crowd had particularly affected one of the spectators on the esplanade of Saint-Jean, such that he couldn’t wait for the arrival of the ship in the port; he jumped into a little boat and gave the order to row in front of the Pharaon, which he met opposite the cove of la Réserve.

Upon seeing this man coming, the young sailor left his post next to the pilot, and came, hat in hand, to lean on the ship’s wall.

He was a young man, 18 to 20 years old, tall, slender, with beautiful black eyes and ebony hair; throughout his person was that calm and resolved air that is particular to men used to confronting danger since they were children.