NOELLE Marseille-Paris : 1919-1939 2
She was born a Royal Princess .
Her earliest memories were of a white bassinet covered with a lace canopy , decorated with pink ribbons and filled with soft stuffed animals and beautiful dolls and golden rattles . She quickly learned that if she opened her mouth and let out a cry , someone would hurry to hold and comfort her . When she was six months old her father would take her out in the garden in her perambulator and let her touch the flowers and he would say , “ They ’ re lovely , Princess , but you ’ re more beautiful than any of them .”
At home she enjoyed it when her father lifted her up in his strong arms and carried her to a window where she could look out and see the roofs of the high buildings , and he would say , “ That ’ s your Kingdom out there , Princess .” He would point to the tall masts of ships bobbing at anchor in the bay . “ Do you see those big ships ? One day they ’ ll be yours to command .”
Visitors would come to the castle to see her , but only a few special ones were permitted to hold her . The others would stare down at her as she lay in her crib and would exclaim over her unbelievably delicate features , and her lovely blond hair , her soft honeycolored skin , and her father would proudly say , “ A stranger could tell she is a Princess !” And he would lean over her crib and whisper , “ Someday a beautiful Prince will come and sweep you off your feet .” And he would gently tuck the warm pink blanket around her and she would drift off to a contented sleep . Her whole world was a roseate dream of ships , tall masts and castles , and it was not until she was five years old that she understood that she was the daughter of a Marseille fishmonger , and that the castles she saw from the window of her tiny attic room were the warehouses around the stinking fish market where her father worked , and that her navy was the fleet of old fishing ships that set out from Marseille every morning before dawn and returned in the early afternoon to vomit their smelly cargo into the waterfront docks .
This was the kingdom of Noelle Page .
The friends of Noelle ’ s father used to warn him about what he was doing . “ You mustn ’ t put fancy ideas in her head , Jacques . She ’ ll think she ’ s better than everybody else .” And their prophecies came true .
On the surface Marseille is a city of violence , the town crowded with hungering sailors with money to spend and clever predators to relieve them of it . But unlike the rest of the French , the people of Marseille have a sense of solidarity that comes from a common struggle for survival , for the lifeblood of the town comes from the sea , and the