Two kilometres from Mont Dol is the great menhir of Champ Dolent, a relic of the stone age which was pagan, but is to-day surmounted by a Christian cross, which seems paradoxical. It has no pretence to beauty or architectural grandeur, and is to be regarded only as a mysterious curiosity.
When one first comes to Dol in Brittany he is in a quandary. Which is it, city or village? The writer does not know even yet. It has all the quaintness and rustic picturesqueness of a mere hamlet, and again, in its station, its hotels, and its tree-lined boulevard, it takes on the aspect of a city. At any rate, if it belongs to the latter classification, it is somnolent, and accordingly delightful.
“Here, my good fellow, can you direct me to the Hôtel de la Poste,” one says to the first native he meets after leaving the station. “Certainly, my good man,” he replies in an equally patronizing tone, “I will take you there.” He declines all remuneration, of course, and will not be patronized in any way. Decidedly he is a most independent individual, but polite withal.
Stendhal, in his “Traveller’s Memories,” said of the great frowning cathedral of the episcopal city of Dol: “It is the most beautiful example of a Gothic edifice which I have seen.” It is not difficult to follow his reasoning, for the grim walls of its façade, in the simplest and severest style, are indeed magnificent examples of the undecorated Gothic of a very early period. Most folk, however, will not call it beautiful when Chartres, Rheims, Beauvais, or even Sées are in mind.
Dol, at any rate, forming the gateway to Brittany, from Normandy through the Cotentin, was a most important centre of Christianity in the sixth century.
The foundation of Dol dates from 548, when a colony of Britons coming from Ireland settled here under the leadership of St. Samson, from whom the present cathedral is named. This is but another of those links which bind the history of Brittany with that of the Celts from overseas. Legend continues the story thus: “Thou goest by the sea” (St. Samson was told), “and where thou wilt disembark, thou shalt find a well. Over this thou wilt build a church, and around it will group the houses forming the city, of which thou wilt be bishop.”
All this came to pass, and for long ages the town has been known as the episcopal city of Dol. William the Conqueror besieged Dol in 1075, but retired after forty days, having failed to sustain his attack. Henry II. of England invaded the city, and Jean Lackland fortified himself here in 1203, but it was retaken by Guy de Thouars in the year following.
Up to Revolutionary times the career of Dol was unceasingly riotous and bloody, but little evidences of a part so played remain visible to-day. All that reminds one of its antiquity is the charmingly severe and simply outlined Cathedral of St. Samson, and the numerous timbered houses with their street-front galleries, always a most interesting feature of a mediæval town.
Sixteen kilometres south of Dol is Combourg, not an important town in many ways, and yet very important, if one demands a sixteenth-century or earlier label on all he admires.
As a French visitor to Combourg has said, “La gare de Combourg is not Combourg; you have yet fifteen hundred metres to go.” This is not a great distance, but, as the town is so completely hidden from the railway, the sensation is that of alighting far from a centre of civilization.