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 Chateau 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 Generale, 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.