A STREET IN ST. MALO
St. Malo’s antiquity and quaintness are its stock in trade, and these, together with its position on a peninsula, with the sea on every hand, make it one of the most popular resorts in France. Steamers from Southampton bring numbers of English visitors—we find no interpreter needed at the hotel. The town is encircled by walls, the greater part recently restored. They are none the less picturesque and the mighty towers at the entrance gateways savor strongly indeed of mediaevalism. In the older part of the town the streets are so narrow and crooked as to exclude motors, the widest not exceeding twenty feet, and there are seldom walks on either side. The houses bordering them show every evidence of age—St. Malo is best described by the often overworked term, “old-world.” The huge church—formerly a cathedral—is so hedged in by buildings that it is impossible to get a good view of the exterior or to take a satisfactory photograph. As a result of such crowding it is poorly lighted inside, though it really has an impressive interior. A walk round the walls or ramparts of St. Malo affords a wonderful view of the sea and surrounding country and also many interesting glimpses of queer nooks and corners in the town itself. The bay is finest at full tide, which rises here to the astonishing height of forty-nine feet above low water. There are numerous fortified islands and it is possible to reach some of these on foot when the tide is out. St. Malo was besieged many times during the endless wars between England and France, but owing to its remarkable fortifications was never taken.
There is more rough, badly worn road between St. Malo and Rennes, though in the main it is broad and level. Its effect on tires is indeed disheartening—we have run less than a thousand miles since landing and new envelopes are showing signs of dissolution. Part of the game, no doubt, but it is hard to be cheerful losers in such a game, to say the least.
Rennes, we find, has other claims to fame than the Dreyfus trial, which is the first distinction that comes to mind. Its public museum and galleries contain one of the best provincial collections in France, and there is an imposing modern cathedral. We have an excellent lunch at the Grand Hotel, though it is a dingy-looking place that would hardly invite a lengthy stop if appearances should be considered. It is not Baedeker’s number one and there is doubtless a better hotel in Rennes.
The road which we follow in leaving the town is the best we have yet traversed in France; it is broad, straight and newly surfaced, and the thirty or more miles to Chateaubriant are rapidly covered. Here we find an ancient town of a few thousand people, and an enormous old castle partly in ruins, a fit match for Conway or Harlech in Britain. Its square-topped, crenelated towers and long embrasured battlements are quite different from the pointed Gothic style of the usual French chateau.
Beyond Chateaubriant the road runs broad and straight for miles through a beautiful and prosperous country. Evidently the land is immensely fertile and tilled with the thoroughness that characterizes French agriculture. The small village is the only discordant note. We pass through several all alike, bare, dirty and uninteresting, quite different from the trim, flower-decked beauty of the English village. And they grow steadily more repulsive as we progress farther inland until, as we near the German border—but the subject is not pleasant enough to anticipate!
