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 Notre-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.