travel. The opening of the book paints the port as a living voice inviting readers to embark toward every horizon, then unfurls Marseille as a monumental “door” through which nations, languages, and trades flow. The author tours the quays and their cargoes (from coffee and cotton to elephants and coal), celebrates the fever of export/import, and stages a vivid departure for China with chaotic traffic and boarding rituals. He sketches the Canebière as a migrators’ forum, recounts a thwarted reunion with the indefatigable Railly, and turns to the Joliette where dockers and broken charbonniers grind out a harsh day for a few francs. The Hotel des Emigrants becomes a crossroads of hopes—Levantines bound for Brazil with a single basket, Serbs, Georgians, Jews, and cyclical Romanian harvesters—set against both swindles and a self-made benefactor’s return; then comes the comic-sad miracle worker who “detattoos” the penitent, and finally the café tables of deep-sea officers, whose lives are measured in voyages rather than days. (This is an automatically generated summary.)