SAINT-MALO.
Saint-Malo, which is built right on the ocean and is enclosed by
ramparts, looks like a crown of stones, the gems of which are the
machicolations. The breakers dash against its walls, and when the tide
is low they gently unfurl on the sand. Little rocks covered with
sea-weed dot the beach and look like black spots on its light surface.
The larger ones, which are upright and smooth, support the
fortifications, thus making them appear higher than they really are.
Above this straight line of walls, broken here and there by a tower or
the pointed ogive of a door, rise the roofs of the houses with their
open garret-windows, their gyrating weather-cocks, and their red
chimneys from which issue spirals of bluish smoke that vanishes in the
air.
Around Saint-Malo are a number of little barren islands that have not a
tree nor a blade of grass, but only some old crumbling walls, great
pieces of which are hurled into the sea by each succeeding storm.
On the other side of the bay, opposite the city and connected with dry
land by a long pier, which separates the port from the ocean, is
Saint-Servan, a large, empty, almost deserted locality, which lies
peacefully in a marshy meadow. At the entrance to Saint-Servan rise the
four towers of the Château de Solidor, which are connected by curtains
and are perfectly black from top to bottom. These alone are sufficient
compensation for having made that extended circuit on the beach, under
the broiling July sun, among the dock-yards and tar-pots and fires.
A walk around the city, over the ramparts, is one of the finest that can
be taken. Nobody goes there. You can sit down in the embrasures of the
cannons and dangle your feet over the abyss. In front of you lies the
mouth of the Rance, which flows between two green hills, the coast, the
islands, the rocks, and the ocean. The sentinel marches up and down
behind you, and his even footsteps echo on the sonorous stones.
One evening we remained out for a long time. The night was beautiful, a
true summer night, without a moon, but brilliant with stars and perfumed
by the sea-breeze. The city was sleeping. One by one the lights went out
in the windows, and the lighthouses shone red in the darkness, which was
quite blue above us and glittering with myriads of twinkling stars. We
could not see the ocean, but we could hear and smell it, and the
breakers that lashed the walls flung drops of foam over us through the
big apertures of the machicolations.
In one place, between the wall and the city houses, a quantity of
cannon-balls are piled up in a ditch. From that point you can see these
words written on the second floor of one of the dwellings:
"Chateaubriand was born here."
Further on, the wall ends at the foot of a tower called Quiquengrogne;
like its sister, La Générale, it is high, broad, and imposing, and is
swelled in the middle like a hyperbola.
Though they are as good as new and absolutely intact, these towers would
no doubt be improved if they lost some of their battlements in the sea
and if ivy spread its kindly leaves over their tops. Indeed, do not
monuments grow greater through recollection, like men and like passions?
And are they not completed by death?
We entered the castle. The empty courtyard planted with a few sickly
lime-trees was as silent as the courtyard of a monastery. The janitress
went and obtained the keys from the commander. When she returned, she
was accompanied by a pretty little girl who wished to see the strangers.
Her arms were bare and she carried a large bunch of flowers. Her black
curls escaped from beneath her dainty little cap, and the lace on her
pantalettes rubbed against her kid shoes tied around the ankles with
black laces. She ran up stairs in front of us beckoning and calling.
The staircase is long, for the tower is high. The bright daylight passes
through the loop-holes like an arrow. When you put your head through one
of these openings, you can see the ocean, which seems to grow wider and
wider, and the crude colour of the sky, which seems to grow larger and
larger, till you are afraid you will lose yourself in it. Vessels look
like launches and their masts like walking-sticks. Eagles must think we
look like ants. I wonder whether they really see us. Do they know that
we have cities and steeples and triumphal arches?
When we arrived on the platform, and although the battlement reached to
our chest, we could not help experiencing the sensation one always feels
at a great height from the earth. It is a sort of voluptuous uneasiness
mingled with fear and delight, pride and terror, a battle between one's
mind and one's nerves. You feel strangely happy; you would like to jump,
fly, spread out in the air and be supported by the wind; but your knees
tremble and you dare not go too near the edge.
Still, one night, in olden times, men climbed this tower with ropes. But
then, it is not astonishing for those times, for that wonderful
sixteenth century, the epoch of fierce convictions and frantic loves!
How the human instrument vibrated then in all its chords! How
liberal-minded, productive, and active men were! Does not this phrase of
Fénelon apply wonderfully well to that period: "A sight well calculated
to delight the eye?" For, without making any reference to the foreground
of the picture,--beliefs crumbling at their foundation like tottering
mountains, newly discovered worlds, lost worlds brought to light again,
Michael-Angelo beneath his dome, laughing Rabelais, observant
Shakespeare, pensive Montaigne,--where can be found a greater
development in passions, a greater violence in courage, a greater
determination in willpower, in fine, a more complete expansion of
liberty struggling against all native fatalities? And with what a bold
relief the episode stands out in history, and still, how wonderfully
well it fits in, thereby giving a glimpse of the dazzling brightness and
broad horizons of the period. Faces, living faces, pass before your
eyes. You meet them only once; but you think of them long afterwards,
and endeavour to contemplate them in order that they may be impressed
more deeply upon your mind. Was not the type of the old soldiers whose
race disappeared around 1598, at the taking of Vervins, fine and
terrible? It was a type represented by men like Lamouche, Heurtand de
Saint-Offange, and La Tremblaye, who came back holding the heads of his
enemies in his hand; also La Fontenelle, of whom so much has been said.
They were men of iron, whose hearts were no softer than their swords,
and who, attracting hundreds of energies which they directed with their
own, entered towns at night, galloping madly at the heads of their
companies, equipped corsairs, burned villages, and were dealt with like
kings! Who has thought of depicting those violent governors of the
provinces, who slaughtered the people recklessly, committed rapes and
swept in gold, like D'Epernon, an atrocious tyrant in Provence and a
perfumed courtier at the Louvre; like Montluc, who strangled Huguenots
with his own hands, or Baligui, the king of Cambrai, who read Machiavel
in order to copy the Valentinois, and whose wife went to war on
horseback, wearing a helmet and a cuirass.
One of the forgotten men of the period, or at least one of those whom
most historians mention only slightly, is the Duke of Mercoeur, the
intrepid enemy of Henri IV, who defied him longer than Mayenne, the
Ligue, and Philip II. Finally he was disarmed, that is, won over and
appeased (by terms that were such that twenty-three articles of the
treaty were not disclosed); then, not knowing what to do, he enlisted in
the Hungarian army and fought the Turks. One day, with five thousand
men, he attacked a whole army, and, beaten again, returned to France and
died of the fever in Nuremberg, at the age of forty-four.
Saint-Malo put me in mind of him. He always tried to get it, but he
never could succeed in making it his subject or his ally. They wished to
fight on their own account, and to do business through their own
resources, and although they were really _ligueurs_, they spurned the
duke as well as the Béarnais.
When De Fontaines, the governor of the city, informed them of the death
of Henri III, they refused to recognize the King of Navarre. They armed
themselves and erected barricades; De Fontaines intrenched himself in
the castle and everybody kept upon the defensive. Little by little, the
people encroached upon him; first, they requested him to declare that he
was willing to maintain their franchises. De Fontaines complied in the
hope of gaining time. The following year (1589), they chose four
generals who were independent of the governor. A year later, they
obtained permission to stretch chains. De Fontaines acceded to
everything. The king was at Laval and he was waiting for him. The time
was close at hand when he would be able to take revenge for all the
humiliations he had suffered, and all the concessions he had been forced
to make. But he precipitated matters and was discovered. When the people
of Saint-Malo reminded him of his promises, he replied that if the king
presented himself, he (De Fontaines) would let him enter the city. When
they learned this, they decided to act.
The castle had four towers. It was the highest one, La Générale, the one
on which De Fontaines relied the most, which they climbed. These bold
attempts were not infrequent, as proved by the ascension of the cliffs
of Fécamp by Bois-Rosé, and the attack of the Château de Blein, by
Guebriant.
The rebels connived and assembled during several evenings at the place
of a certain man named Frotet, sieur de La Lanbelle; they entered into
an understanding with a Scotch gunner, and one dark night they armed
themselves, went out to the rampart, let themselves down with ropes and
approached the foot of La Générale.
There they waited. Soon a rustling sound was heard on the wall, and a
ball of thread was lowered, to which they fastened their rope ladder.
The ladder was then hoisted to the top of the tower and attached to the
end of a culverin which was levelled in an embrasure of the battlement.
Michel Frotet was the first to ascend, and after him came Charles
Anselin, La Blissais and the others. The night was dark and the wind
whistled; they had to climb slowly, to hold their daggers between their
teeth and feel for the rungs of the ladder with their hands and feet.
Suddenly (they were midway between the ground and the top), they felt
themselves going down; the rope had slipped. But they did not utter a
sound; they remained motionless. Their weight had caused the culverin to
tip forward; it stopped on the edge of the embrasure and they slowly
resumed their ascension and arrived one after another on the platform of
the tower.
The sleepy sentinels did not have time to give the alarm. The garrison
was either asleep or playing dice on the drums. A panic seized the
soldiers and they fled to the dungeon. The conspirators pursued them and
attacked them in the hallways, on the staircase, and in the rooms,
crushing them between the doors and slaughtering them mercilessly.
Meanwhile the townspeople arrived to lend assistance; some put up
ladders, and entered the tower without encountering any resistance and
plundered it. La Pérandière, lieutenant of the castle, perceiving La
Blissais, said to him: "This, sir, is a most miserable night." But La
Blissais impressed upon him that this was not the time for conversation.
The Count of Fontaines had not made his appearance. They went in search
of him, and found him lying dead across the threshold of his chamber,
pierced by a shot from an arquebuse that one of the townspeople had
fired at him, as he was about to go out, escorted by a servant bearing a
light. "Instead of rushing to face the danger," says the author of this
account,[5] "he had dressed as leisurely as if he were going to a
wedding, without leaving one shoulder-knot untied."
This outbreak in Saint-Malo, which so greatly harmed the king, did not
in the least benefit the Duke de Mercoeur. He had hoped that the people
would accept a governor from his hands, his son, for example, a mere
child, for that would have meant himself, but they obstinately refused
to listen to it. He sent troops to protect them, but they refused to let
them enter, and the soldiers were compelled to take lodgings outside of
the city.
Still, in spite of all this, they had not become more royalist, for some
time later, having arrested the Marquis of La Noussaie and the Viscount
of Denoual, it cost the former twelve thousand crowns to get out of
prison and the latter two thousand.
Then, fearing that Pont-Brient would interrupt commercial relations with
Dinan and the other cities in the Ligue, they attacked and subjected it.
Presuming that their bishop, who was the temporal master of the city,
might be likely to deprive them of the freedom they had just acquired,
they put him in prison and kept him there for a year.
The conditions at which they finally accepted Henri IV are well-known:
they were to take care of themselves, not be obliged to receive any
garrison, be exempt from taxes for six years, etc.
Situated between Brittany and Normandy, this little people seems to have
the tenacity and granite-like resistance of the former and the impulses
and dash of the latter. Whether they are sailors, writers, or travellers
on foreign seas, their predominant trait is audacity; they have violent
natures which are almost poetical in their brutality, and often narrow
in their obstinacy. There is this resemblance between these two sons of
Saint-Malo, Lamennais and Broussais: they were always equally extreme in
their systems and employed their latter years in fighting what they had
upheld in the earlier part of their life.
In the city itself are little tortuous streets edged with high houses
and dirty fishmongers' shops. There are no carriages or luxuries of any
description; everything is as black and reeking as the hold of a ship. A
sort of musty smell, reminiscent of Newfoundland, salt meat, and long
sea voyages pervades the air.
"The watch and the round are made every night with big English dogs,
which are let loose outside of the city by the man who is in charge of
them, and it is better not to be in their vicinity at that time. But
when morning comes, they are led back to a place in the city where they
shed all their ferocity which, at night, is so great."[6]
Barring the disappearance of this four-legged police which at one time
devoured M. du Mollet, the existence of which is confirmed by a
contemporaneous text, the exterior of things has changed but little, no
doubt, and even the civilized people living in Saint-Malo admit that it
is very much behind the times.
The only picture we noticed in the church is a large canvas that
represents the battle of Lepante and is dedicated to Nôtre-Dame des
Victoires, who can be seen floating above the clouds. In the foreground,
all Christianity, together with crowned kings and princesses, is
kneeling. The two armies can be seen in the background. The Turks are
being hurled into the sea and the Christians stretch their arms towards
heaven.
The church is ugly, has no ornamentation, and looks almost like a
Protestant house of worship. I noticed very few votive offerings, a fact
that struck me as being rather peculiar in this place of sea perils.
There are no flowers nor candles in the chapels, no bleeding hearts nor
bedecked Virgin, nothing, in fact, of all that which causes M. Michelet
to wax indignant.
Opposite the ramparts, at a stone's throw from the city, rises the
little island of Grand-Bay. There, can be found the tomb of
Chateaubriand; that white spot cut in the rock is the place he has
designated for his body.
We went there one evening when the tide was low and the sun setting in
the west. The water was still trickling over the sand. At the foot of
the island, the dripping sea-weed spread out like the hair of antique
women over a tomb.
The island is deserted; sparse grass grows in spots, mingled here and
there with tufts of purple flowers and nettles. On the summit is a
dilapidated casemate, with a courtyard enclosed by crumbling walls.
Beneath this ruin, and half-way up the hill, is a space about ten feet
square, in the middle of which rises a granite slab surmounted by a
Latin cross. The tomb comprises three pieces: one for the socle, one for
the slab, and another for the cross.
Chateaubriand will rest beneath it, with his head turned towards the
sea; in this grave, built on a rock, his immortality will be like his
life--deserted and surrounded by tempests. The centuries and the
breakers will murmur a long time around his great memory; the breakers
will dash against his tomb during storms, or on summer mornings, when
the white sails unfold and the swallow arrives from across the seas;
they will bring him the melancholy voluptuousness of far-away horizons
and the caressing touch of the sea-breeze. And while time passes and the
waves of his native strand swing back and forth between his cradle and
his grave, the great heart of René, grown cold, will slowly crumble to
dust to the eternal rhythm of this never-ceasing music.
We walked around the tomb and touched it, and looked at it as if it
contained its future host, and sat down beside it on the ground.
The sky was pink, the sea was calm, and there was a lull in the breeze.
Not a ripple broke the motionless surface of ocean on which the setting
sun shed its golden light. Blue near the coast and mingled with the
evening mist, the sea was scarlet everywhere else and deepened into a
dark red line on the horizon. The sun had no rays left; they had fallen
from its face and drowned their brilliancy in the water, on which they
seemed to float. The red disc set slowly, robbing the sky of the pink
tinge it had diffused over it, and while both the sun and the delicate
color were wearing away, the pale blue shades of night crept over the
heavens. Soon the sun touched the ocean and sank into it to the middle.
For a moment it appeared cut in two by the horizon; the upper half
remained firm, while the under one vacillated and lengthened; then it
finally disappeared; and when the reflection died away from the place
where the fiery ball had gone down, it seemed as if a sudden gloom had
spread over the sea.
The shore was dark. The light in one of the windows in a city house,
which a moment before was bright, presently went out. The silence grew
deeper, though sounds could be heard. The breakers dashed against the
rocks and fell back with a roar; long-legged gnats sang in our ears and
disappeared with a buzzing of their transparent wings, and the
indistinct voices of the children bathing at the foot of the ramparts
reached us, mingled with their laughter and screams.
Young boys came out of the water, and, stepping gingerly on the pebbles,
ran up the beach to dress. When they attempted to put on their shirts,
the moist linen clung to their wet shoulders and we could see their
white torsos wriggling with impatience, while their heads and arms
remained concealed and the sleeves flapped in the wind like flags.
A man with his wet hair falling straight around his neck, passed in
front of us. His dripping body shone. Drops trickled from his dark,
curly beard, and he shook his head so as to let the water run out of his
locks. His broad chest was parted by a stubby growth of hair that
extended between his powerful muscles. It heaved with the exertion of
swimming and imparted an even motion to his flat abdomen, which was as
smooth as ivory where it joined the hips. His muscular thighs were set
above slender knees and fine legs ending in arched feet, with short
heels and spread toes. He walked slowly over the beach.
How beautiful is the human form when it appears in its original freedom,
as it was created in the first day of the world! But where are we to
find it, masked as it is and condemned never to reappear. That great
word, Nature, which humanity has repeated sometimes with idolatry and
sometimes with fear, which philosophers have sounded and poets have
sung, how it is being lost and forgotten! If there are still here and
there in the world, far from the pushing crowd, some hearts which are
tormented by the constant search of beauty, and forever feeling the
hopeless need of expressing what cannot be expressed and doing what can
only be dreamed, it is to Nature, as to the home of the ideal, that they
must turn. But how can they? By what magic will they be able to do so?
Man has cut down the forests, has conquered the seas, and the clouds
that hover over the cities are produced by the smoke that rises from the
chimneys. But, say others, do not his mission and his glory consist in
going forward and attacking the work of God, and encroaching upon it?
Man denies His work, he ruins it, crushes it, even in his own body, of
which he is ashamed and which he conceals like a crime.
Man having thus become the rarest and most difficult thing in the world
to know (I am not speaking of his heart, O moralists!), it follows that
the artist ignores his shape as well as the qualities that render it
beautiful. Where is the poet, nowadays, even amongst the most brilliant,
who knows what a woman is like? Where could the poor fellow ever have
seen any? What has he ever been able to learn about them in the salons;
could he see through the corset and the crinoline?
Better than all the rhetoric in the world, the plastic art teaches those
who study it the gradation of proportions, the fusion of planes, in a
word, harmony. The ancient races, through the very fact of their
existence, left the mark of their noble attitudes and pure blood on the
works of the masters. In Juvenal, I can hear confusedly the death-rattles
of the gladiators; Tacitus has sentences that resemble the drapery of a
laticlave, and some of Horace's verses are like the body of a Greek slave,
with supple undulations, and short and long syllables that sound like
crotala.
But why bother about these things? Let us not go so far back, and let us
be satisfied with what is manufactured. What is wanted nowadays is
rather the opposite of nudity, simplicity and truth? Fortune and success
will fall to the lot of those who know how to dress and clothe facts!
The tailor is the king of the century and the fig-leaf is its symbol;
laws, art, politics, all things, appear in tights! Lying freedom, plated
furniture, water-colour pictures, why! the public loves this sort of
thing! So let us give it all it wants and gorge the fool!