Chapter 3

The principal building at Dol is the Cathedral, built of grey granite, in the style of many of our English churches. On the south is the "porte episcopale," a large projecting porch with mullioned sides, and, near it, a smaller porch with a central column semée of hearts, the "armes parlantes" of Bishop Cœuret who built it. The clustered columns of the nave, consist of a central pillar surrounded by four others running up to the roof, so slender and delicate that they are united to the centre by small bars of iron. Over the high altar is an enormous wooden crozier, carved and gilt, from which the Host is suspended. A beautiful Renaissance tomb on the north side of the cathedral was raised in 1507 to the memory of Bishop James, who died three years before. The sculpture is much mutilated, but the arabesques are most delicately and elegantly chiselled. It is supposed to be the work of Jean Just of Tours, sculptor of the magnificent tomb of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, erected at St. Denis by order of Francis I.

The chapel of St. Samson, patron saint of the cathedral, has been restored. Mad people were brought here for cure, and placed in a recess which still remains; the opening was covered over by an iron grating. Dol was formerly the ecclesiastical metropolis of Brittany; the see was founded by Samson, one of those British monks, who, with a whole population of men and women, emigrated from England to escape the Saxon slavery. They crossed the Channel in barks made of skins sewn together, singing, as they went, the Lamentations of the Psalmist. This emigration lasted more than a century (from 450 to 550), and poured a Christian population into a Celtic country where paganism was longest preserved. St. Samson and his six suffragans—all monks, missionaries, and bishops, like himself—were called the "Seven Saints of Brittany;" St. Samson was what was termed an "evêque portatif," meaning a bishop without a diocese, until he founded that of Dol. Telio, also a British monk, with the assistance of St. Samson, planted near Dol an orchard three miles in length, and to him is attributed the first introduction of the apple-tree into Brittany. Wherever the monks went, they cultivated the soil; all had in their mouths the words of the Apostle, "If any would not work, neither should he eat." The people admired the industry of the new comers, and, from admiration they passed to imitation; the peasants joined the monks in tilling the ground, and even the brigands became agriculturists. "The Cross and the plough, labour and prayer," was the motto of these early missionaries.

“Sûr que le Ciel maudit l’arbre stérile, Le sage passe en opérant le bien: Vivre et mourir à l’univers utile, C’est la devise et l’esprit du chrétien.” _Chants de Piété_, MALO DE GARABY.

The monks of Dol were great bee-farmers, as we learn from an anecdote told by Count Montalembert in his ’Moines de l’Occident.’ One day when St. Samson of Dol and St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, were conversing on the respective merits of their monasteries, St. Samson said that his monks were such good and careful preservers of their bees that, besides the honey which they yielded in abundance, they furnished more wax than was used in the churches during the year, but that, their climate not being fit for the growth of vines, they had great scarcity of wine. Upon hearing this, St. Germain replied, "We, on the contrary, produce more wine than we can consume, but we have to buy wax; so, if you will furnish us with wax, we will give you a tenth of our wine." Samson accepted the offer, and the mutual arrangement was continued during the lives of the two saints.

The marshy country round Dol has been formerly inundated by the sea; it is now reclaimed and protected by a dyke twenty-two miles long, extending from Pontorson to Chateauneuf. The whole tract is full of buried wood, a submerged forest, which the people dig up, and use for furniture. It is black, like the Irish bog-oak. They call it "couëron." In the midst of this plain rises a mamelon or insulated granite rock, resembling in form Mont St. Michel, called the Mont Dol. On the top is the little chapel of Notre Dame de l’Espérance, upon which was formerly a telegraph, and near it is a column surmounted by a colossal statue of Our Lady. Mont Dol was a consecrated place of the Druids. The guides showed us a spring which never dries, and also a rock upon which they point out the print of the foot of the demon, left by him when wrestling with St. Michael. We met the curé, who gave us a medal of the church, and told us the principal points in the view before us, extending over the whole Bay of Cancale.

On our way back to Dol, we walked to a cornfield, in the midst of it stands a menhir(2) (they are so termed from the Breton _mœn_, stone, and _hir_, long), called the "Pierre du champ dolant," a shaft of gray granite, about thirty feet high, and said to measure fifteen more underground. On the top is a cross. The first preachers of Christianity, unable to uproot the veneration for the menhirs, surmounted them with the cross, preserving the worship but changing the symbol. In the same manner, they did not attempt to destroy the veneration for sacred groves and fountains, but transferred to new saints the miracles of times past.

We drove through a pretty country to see the Château of Combourg, where Chateaubriand passed his early days. It is a fine square castle of the fifteenth century, with massive towers at each corner, surrounded by trees, and standing proudly over the village below. The drawbridge has been replaced by a modern "perron" or flight of stone steps, which leads to the entrance hall. The salle d’honneur looks over a lake. We were taken into his little melancholy room which Chateaubriand so well describes.

"La fenêtre de mon donjon s’ouvrait sur le cour intérieure; le jour, j’avais en perspective les créneaux de la courtine opposeé, où végétaient des scolopendres et croissait un prunier sauvage. Quelques martinets, qui, durant l’été, s’enfonçaient en criant dans les trous des murs, étaient mes seuls compagnons. La nuit je n’apercevais qu’un petit morceau du ciel et quelques étoiles. Lorsque la lune brillait et qu’elle s’abaissait à l’occident, j’en étais averti par ses rayons, qui venaient à mon lit au travers des carreaux losangés de la fenêtre. Des chouettes voletant d’un tour à l’autre, passant et repassant entre la lune et moi, dessinaient sur mes rideaux l’ombre mobile de leurs ailes."

The bed on which Chateaubriand died has been brought from Paris and placed in the room.

The next morning we left Dol for Cancale, of such world-wide celebrity for its oysters. We left the railway at La Gouesnière, five miles and a half from Cancale, to which we proceeded by the mail cart. It requires to travel in Brittany to form any notion of the detestable vehicles, whether public or "voitures à volonté," in which travellers in this country are condemned to ride. Uncleaned, unpainted, creaking, jolting machines—as fully tenanted with every kind of insect annoyance, as if one were travelling in a hen-house. The horses are good, hardy, enduring little animals, which go their thirty to fifty miles a day without any distress either to themselves or the traveller. The Breton drivers are gentle and kind, making more use of their voices than of their whips in urging on their horses. The town of Cancale is situated on the heights, a precipitous descent leading to the village below, called La Houle, which lines the edge of the shore, and is occupied mostly by fishermen. This is the port, and here are the pier and the lighthouse, and also a comfortable inn to which the people of St. Malo resort in large parties, an omnibus running thence daily. The panoramic view of the bay of Cancale is beautiful and most extensive, one vast crescent of sand some ten square leagues in extent, stretching from the picturesque rocks of Cancale to Granville, its most northern point, and including Mont Dol, Mont St. Michel, and Avranches. The western side is lined with huts and windmills, but the water is so shallow that no boat can land. Having walked round the little hurdled-in oyster parks, numbering, we were told, about 600, and made ourselves very wet and dirty, though we borrowed sabots to enable us to wade through the mud, we returned to the inn, and next day reached St. Malo.

St. Malo stands on a small granite island at the mouth of the Rance, connected, by a causeway called "Le Sillon," with the mainland. The space it occupies is so small, that castle, churches, streets, and towers are all crowded together, and the whole is nearly surrounded by a sea wall, which makes the town appear as if rising straight out of the ocean. Towards the sea, the bay is encircled with groups of craggy islets, many surmounted by forts, bristling up as the tide recedes, in every direction. Conspicuous among these island rocks is that called the Grand Bé, chosen by Chateaubriand for his last resting-place, as he wished to be buried near the place of his birth. Singularly enough the name of the island "Bé" signifies a tomb. On his request being granted, Chateaubriand wrote to the Mayor of St. Malo.

"Enfin, Monsieur, j’aurai un tombeau, et je vous le devrai, ainsi qu’à mes bienveillants compatriotes. Vous savez, Monsieur, que je ne veux que quelques pieds de sable, une pierre de rivage sans ornement et sans inscription, une simple croix de fer, et une petite grille pour empêcher les animaux de me deterrer. La croix dira que l’homme réposant à ses pieds était un Chrétien; cela suffit à ma mémoire."

At low water, the island is accessible on foot. The tomb consists of a plain stone without inscription, surmounted by a granite cross, and is surrounded by an iron railing. It is placed on the edge of a rock, and is the resort of crowds of pilgrims.

"La vaste mer murmure autour de son cercueil."

The Hôtel de France is the house where Chateaubriand’s family lived, and the room he occupied is filled with various memorials of him. The Chateaubriand arms hang upon the wall. They were given by St. Louis to an ancestor who was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Massoura. The King changed the peacock’s plumes, previously borne by the family, to fleurs de lys on a field gules, with the proud motto "Mon sang teint les bannières de France." The tides here rise to between forty and fifty feet above low-water mark, so that the harbour is dry at low water, and is crossed on foot to go to St. Servan, the suburb on the opposite side.

We walked round the ramparts and were shown the little gate down which were sent every night the watch dogs of St. Malo, "chiens Anglais qui s’appelent dogues." Shut up during the day, they were let out at ten at night, and recalled in the morning to the sound of a copper trumpet, by their keeper, styled the "chiennetier." Enactments were made for their maintenance, called the "droit de chiennage." When let loose at night, a warning bell was rung to apprise the inhabitants, as they tore the legs of every one they met. Hence it used to be said "Il a été à St. Malo, les chiens lui ont rongé les mollets." In 1770, a naval officer trying to force a passage was attacked by a troop of these dogs prowling between St. Malo and St. Servan; his sword was useless as defence, and, exhausted, in despair he threw himself into the sea, but here he was followed by the dogs and torn to pieces. A few days after they were all destroyed by the municipality, and the custom of keeping them has been since discontinued. In an old map of St. Malo, or "Saint Malo de l’isle," as it was then styled, preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, is laid down, near the "Sillon" a little sentry-box marked, "Corps-de-garde de nuit pour les chiens," and again, near the "Tour de la grande Porte," is the "Pont aux chiens." The date of the map is 1662. The arms of St. Malo till the seventeenth century were, on a field argent, a mastiff gules.

The castle dates principally from the Queen-Duchess Anne, and one of its massive towers, the "Qui qu’en grogne" is a memorial of her dauntless spirit. Twice crowned Queen of France, she was the only one of her line worthy of the ducal crown. The Bishop of St. Malo was temporal lord of the town, and maintained he held it direct from the Pope, as a fief of the Church, because it was built upon land where a convent formerly stood; and consequently the Duke of Brittany had no authority over it, either spiritual or temporal. Duke John V. began to build a castle, but the Bishop opposed himself to its construction, and the contest lasted on until the time of the Queen-Duchess Anne, who, in defiance of the Bishop, and to shew that she was and always would be sovereign of St. Malo, finished the fortress and caused the lofty inscription to be placed in raised letters upon the great tower: "Qui qu’en grogne, ainsi sera, c’est mon plaisir;"—so runs the legend, but unfortunately a similar story is told of Louis II., Duke of Bourbon.

On the opposite side of the mouth of the Rance is Dinard, lately become a favourite watering-place; it has good sands, and houses and villas are rapidly rising up in every direction, and covering its granite hills.

The prettiest route to Dinan is by the little steamer which ascends the Rance, a lovely voyage, occupying about two hours. The banks one mixture of rocks, valleys, and verdure; the river now expanding into the width of a lake, now narrowing between its forest-clothed sides. After passing through a lock, and, winding our way through a narrow pass of rocky crags, we reached the bridge of Dinan; above us, the gigantic granite viaduct stretched across the valley, the town, with its feudal walls and castle, perched on its rocky heights over the river.

In the Grande Place is a miserable statue of Du Guesclin, who looks more like a wandering minstrel than the hero of Brittany and Constable of France. His life forms quite an historic romance. His future greatness was foretold by a prophetess; his wife, the Lady Tiphaine, was herself a fairy; his battles resemble those of the giants of old. Du Guesclin was born at Broons, and was the eldest of ten children and of great trouble to his parents. One day his mother dreamt she was in possession of a casket, containing portraits of herself and her lord, and on one side were set nine precious stones of lustrous beauty encircling one rough unpolished pebble. In her dream she carried the casket to a lapidary, and asked him to take out the rough stone as unworthy of such goodly company; but he advised her to allow it to remain, and subsequently it shone forth more brilliantly than the precious gems with which it was surrounded. The after superiority of Bertrand over the other nine children explained the dream.

It was in this "Place," where his statue now stands, the celebrated duel took place between Du Guesclin and an English knight, called by the Breton chroniclers Thomas of Cantorbéry. Dinan was at that time closely besieged by the Duke of Lancaster (1359), with the young Count de Montfort, and defended by Du Guesclin. A truce of forty days had been agreed upon, before the expiration of which Oliver, brother of Du Guesclin, rode out unarmed beyond the city walls, and was made prisoner by Thomas of Cantorbéry, who demanded a ransom of 1000 florins. On this news reaching Du Guesclin, he immediately repaired to the English camp, where he found the Duke of Lancaster playing chess with Sir John Chandos. They received him most cordially, and agreed that the dispute should be settled by a combat within the walls, the Duke of Lancaster consenting to preside. Victory declared in favour of Du Guesclin, who would have cut off the head of his adversary, had not the Duke of Lancaster interceded for his life. Cantorbéry was dragged upon a hurdle out of the lists, and condemned to pay 1000 florins to Oliver; his horse and armour were given to Bertrand, and the felon knight expelled the English army.

We drove to see the Castle of Montafilant, one of the apanages of the Rohan family, which passed with many others to the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, by his marriage with the heiress Françoise de Dinan. The castle is approached by a steep winding path, leading to the plateau upon which it stands. Before the use of firearms, its position rendered it impregnable. Of its seven towers, two only remain.

The story of Gilles de Bretagne forms the subject of a romance by the Vicomte Walsh. Though his conduct was not free from blame, his long captivity and tragic end have rendered this unfortunate prince an object of pity to posterity. Third son of Duke John V., he was reared with Henry VI. of England, and personally attached to the English; but he never was in league with England against his own country, and his uncle the Constable Richemont regarded him as the honour and hope of his house. His wife Françoise was the most beautiful and accomplished woman of her time, the "perle de noblesse, de gentilesse, et de savoir;" and moreover possessed of the rich inheritance of her uncle Bertrand de Dinan, of the Montafilant branch. She had been betrothed from her infancy to the Sire de Gavre, son of Guy, Comte de Laval; but her father died when she was only eight years old, and Gilles de Bretagne carried her off by force. Dissatisfied with his paternal inheritance, the lordship of Champtocé, he retired to Guildo, one of the châteaux of Françoise’s dower, where he passed his time in company with his English archers. His withdrawal from court was represented to Duke Francis as the beginning of a revolt, by Arthur de Montauban, his bitterest enemy and a great favourite of the Duke. Gilles neglected his young wife, and she is reported, in an unguarded moment, to have said to Montauban, she would marry him "if her husband were to die." Duke Francis was determined to get rid of his brother, and Charles VII. was persuaded to assist him in his vile design. The King arrested Gilles on the charge of high treason, as being in correspondence with the English; and, in proof of the charge, his enemies produced forged letters from the King of England compromising the loyalty of Gilles. Charles gave him over to his brother for punishment. In vain were Gilles’s supplications to the Duke, or the entreaties of the Constable, who went to Dinan and knelt to Francis to beg for the pardon of his brother. Equally fruitless his being acquitted at Rédon, from there being no proof of his guilt. The unfortunate Gilles was dragged from prison to prison, and consigned to keepers destitute of every feeling of humanity. Montauban, an Italian by descent (his mother was a Visconti), sent for poison from Lombardy, and administered in his soup a strong dose, which the good constitution of Gilles enabled him to resist. Starvation was then tried, and the wretched Gilles would stand at his prison window, calling on the passers by to give him bread: "Du pain, du pain pour l’amour de Dieu," but no one ventured to relieve him. At last, a poor woman dared to give him food, and placed a loaf on the edge of his grated window, continuing for six months to share with him in secret her scanty meal of black bread. Seeing that he could hold out no longer and that his death was determined upon, Gilles begged the woman would fetch him a minister of religion, that he might confess before he died. By stealth she brought him a Cordelier monk, who confessed him across the bars of his prison, and Gilles adjured him to seek his brother and acquaint him with his pitiable condition. The monk started on his errand, but in the mean time the gaolers of Gilles determined on putting an end to his life. They twisted a cloth round his neck, and smothered him between two mattresses while he slept. The monks of Bosquen carried his body to their abbey for interment, and the wooden effigy that was placed over his grave is still preserved in the Museum at St. Brieuc. The monk who had received Gilles’s confession went in quest of Duke Francis, who, on hearing of his brother’s death when at Avranches, had left for Saint Michel. The monk met him on the Grève, and cited him in the name of his brother "de la part du Messire Gilles" to appear within fifty days at the tribunal of Heaven to answer for his murder. The menace was realised. Duke Francis died within the appointed time, struck with remorse, and terrified at the summons of the Cordelier. The monk was never seen again. On the death of Gilles, the Duke of Brittany himself wished to marry Françoise, but she would not listen to his proposals; and at last was obliged, in order to recover her liberty, to marry the aged Comte de Laval, father of her betrothed, with whom she lived peacefully thirty years, and had three sons. Duke Francis II. appointed her to the charge of rearing his daughter Anne.

Arthur Montauban turned monk to avoid the vengeance of Duke Peter, brother of Gilles, and eventually became Archbishop of Bordeaux. The Pope gave him the Abbey of Rédon, but popular indignation prevented him from accepting the appointment.

On our return from Montafilant we stopped to visit the Lunatic Asylum (Asile des aliénés), called Les Bas Foins, kept by the brothers of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu. There are six hundred inmates under the charge of about sixty brethren. The buildings, with the chapel, are very handsome and most complete in all the arrangements. Within the enclosure is a large piece of land. The lunatics are employed in agricultural, garden, and house occupations; they look very contented and happy. Visitors are not allowed to speak to them. We omitted seeing the Croix du Saint Esprit, a curiously sculptured Gothic granite cross of the fourteenth century, not far from the asylum.

The castle of Dinan is now a prison. It was occupied by the Queen-Duchess Anne, when on her way to a pilgrimage to Notre Dame-du-Folgoët, in fulfilment of a vow made during the illness of Louis XII. In the chapel is shewn a sculptured seat, still called the arm-chair of the Duchess Anne. Within these walls were crammed, in the last century, about 2000 English prisoners of war, many of whom fell victims to a contagious fever. From the platform of the keep we had a magnificent view of the surrounding country, extending to Mont Dol and the sea.

The church of St. Sauveur has a richly sculptured Romanesque portal. It contains the heart of Du Guesclin, transferred from the church of the Dominicans, where he desired it to be interred by the side of his wife Tiphaine. His body was buried at St. Denis, in a tomb King Charles V. caused to be made in his lifetime, and he left orders that on his death his Constable should repose at his feet. On the dark-coloured monumental stone now incrusted on the wall, are roughly sculptured his arms (an eagle displayed charged with a cotice(3)), with a commemorative inscription in gold letters:—

“Cy: gist: le cueur: de Missire: bertram: du gueaquī en: son vivāt: conētiable de france: qui: trepassa: le: xiii^e jour: de: jullet: l’an: mil iii^e IIII^xx dont: son: corps: repos avecques: ceulx: des: Roys a sainct: denis en France.”

Above hangs a painting representing the Governor of Châteauneuf Randon, laying the keys of the town upon the dead body of the Constable.(4)