From the waist down, she’s like any daughter of Eve.
From the waist up, nothing matches her beauty.
I set out with the chief Francophile to explore the roads and byways of Brittany. As we drove past a routine road sign, “MALESTROIT” caught his Francophile eye, along with a smaller sign underneath: “Ville Médiévale.” We screeched to a stop. Sure, there isn’t a town or village in France that doesn’t have a handful of medieval cobblestone alleys, but Malestroit knew this too, and announced its wares shamelessly anyway. Nothing is more tempting than a shameless woman. We were tempted. We parked. We wandered.
Step by step, the Francophile’s face fell and grew lined with disappointment. There are plenty more like this one, he muttered sadly. Nothing special, he sighed. Drag people here? Absolutely not, he concluded. Even the nun playing the church organ didn’t lift his spirits with her music. Before he could drown his sorrow in a juicy “Merde,” I agreed with him even though I didn’t agree, and we went back to the car.
When the General Comes to Visit and Invites Me to Malestroit
That night, General Audibert came to me in a dream and reminded me that Malestroit had been a center of Resistance fighters in Brittany during World War II. He himself, he added modestly, had commanded them, until the Gestapo arrested him at the Augustinian monastery in town. From that monastery, priests in black wool robes suddenly appeared. “We are paratroopers of the Free France army!”
they declared, and immediately stripped off their robes, and indeed I saw their camouflage uniforms and the Cross of Lorraine on their shoulders. Even the mother superior of the convent, Yvonne Aimée Bouvier, pressed close to me, a five-pointed star coated in white enamel hanging from her neck. “The Legion of Honor,” she explained modestly. “I received it from General de Gaulle himself, although personally he wasn’t thrilled that I also treated wounded Germans,” she added, fluttering her modest eyelashes.
The Francophile said there are plenty more towns like Malestroit, I muttered. The general faded away. The Francophile said it’s nothing special. The paratroopers evaporated. Drag people here? Absolutely not, I quoted. The mother superior turned her back to me. I fell asleep.
Don’t worry, we’ll return to the general, the parachuting priests, and Mother Bouvier at the end of the article.
I woke up to the song of a siren.
For the Sirens enchant with the ringing magic of their song.
(Homer’s Odyssey, Book 12, line 44)
The Siren of Brittany
“Mademoiselle Malestroit. A siren,” she introduced herself, and she didn’t need to say another word. I got up the next morning, started the car, and drove back to Malestroit.
It’s a mere 50 kilometers from Manoir de la Chaussée, the château where I’m staying (and where you could stay too, if you’d like).
So here’s the thing: sirens, as everyone knows, have the shape of a fish from the waist down, and from the waist up are beautiful women. This siren, Malestroit, is also split in two. From the waist down, that is the ground floor of its buildings, it’s like any town by the sea: clothing stores, boulangeries, pâtisseries, butcher shops, delicatessens, pubs, restaurants. But from the waist up, that is the upper floors of its buildings… careful! I tripped twice.
A little taste of what’s coming:
And now, let’s hit the road.
We enter Malestroit over a small double bridge that crosses the junction of the Oust River with the Nantes-Brest Canal.
A Little About the Nantes-Brest Canal
An artificial canal that cuts across Brittany lengthwise, from Nantes in the south to Brest in the north. It was Napoleon who decided to have it built, following the English army’s siege of Brest. The idea was to create an inland waterway that wouldn’t be exposed to the threat of a hostile fleet from the sea. Construction began in 1811, and Napoleon III inaugurated it in 1858.
The canal runs about 360 kilometers. No fewer than 238 locks allow boats to rise and fall to overcome changes in elevation. Today the canal has lost its military and commercial importance, since land and air transport are more practical, but it’s still beautiful and sparkling.
Next to the medieval center there’s a tourist information office, where, if you don’t trust me, you can pick up a brochure with a map and check whether the information I bring here is accurate. The map marks the main sites and the brochure gives a short explanation of each.
Stop No. 2: Malestroit’s Town Hall
Site number 1 is, of course, the town hall. On its facade is the coat of arms, the heraldic shield of Malestroit, bearing the inscription “He who counts his money is not from Malestroit.” I checked with the guy at the pub across the street. Not only had he counted his money, he’d even counted the coins I gave him for my beer, counted them twice. There he is, behind me, that non-Malestroit imposter.
Stop No. 2: The Town Square. A Rectangular Plaza Lined with Cafés and Pubs.
The old houses combine stone construction with diagonal wooden beams.
Stop No. 8: The Pelican House
Why a pelican? Because the pelican is a common Christian symbol found in churches and religious artifacts, mostly Catholic. The origin of its sanctity lies in ancient legends that predate the appearance of Jesus. According to these legends, when a mother pelican can’t find food for her chicks, she pierces her own breast and feeds her young with her flesh and blood. The connection to Jesus is obvious from there.
The main attractions are on the upper floors: strange sculptures.
Stop No. 9: The House of Truie Qui File La
It’s worth taking a closer look:
According to the brochure, you can see in this stone relief a pig running on a ball, a hunter blowing a hunting horn, a man hitting his wife, a menacing dog, and a rabbit playing with its cub. I saw some of it, maybe, and some of it I just believe is there.
And maybe from this angle it’s clearer:
Let’s keep looking, especially on the upper floors:
Stop No. 14: Food
The guardhouse. Formerly a barracks that housed 400 soldiers and 80 horses. Today it’s a restaurant.
On the ground floor, two giant stone fireplaces remain. In one of them, the grill cook is preparing my steak right now:
While he adds pork fat to the fire, I’m served my appetizer: rabbit terrine.
And here comes the steak, or to be precise: Coeur de basse-côte de boeuf black angus.
There’s no room left, but we won’t give up dessert:
Karen ordered that mountain of chocolate, whipped cream, ice cream, and cookies. I made do with a modest crème brûlée:
It was delicious, but I can’t move. And that’s a problem, because it’s 2:30, and the restaurant owner is bound, out of tradition, to close right now.
All that’s left is to pray:
Heaven above, have mercy on me, if there’s any mercy left to give,
If somewhere among you there’s a god, and a path that leads to one,
I confess that I myself have never found it,
So pray for me instead, won’t you.
(Chaim Nachman Bialik, 1873-1934, not me)
So if we’re talking prayer, let’s head to the church.
Stop 35: Malestroit’s Church
The Church of Saint Gilles. Gilles (in French) is actually Aegidius, one of the 14 “Holy Helpers,” saints considered by Catholics to be especially effective against various illnesses.
You can read about their specialties here.
As you can read there, headaches fall under Saint Agathius, family disputes belong to Eustace, Erasmus is in charge of intestinal diseases, Blaise handles sore throats, sudden death (curable? apparently so) is Saint Barbara’s domain, mental illness goes to George, epilepsy fell to Vitus, physicians (a kind of illness in itself, apparently) to Pantaleon, and Cyriacus took on “temptations on the deathbed” (?).
So what’s left for our Gilles? The p l a g u e!!!
On my way out of the church I passed two nuns. For a moment I thought about checking whether these were actually Free France paratroopers in nun disguise. On second, more sober thought, I let it go.
In a religious mood, following the brochure, I go looking for stop 38, on rue Hurberdière.
On the lintel of what today looks like an ordinary house, I find the inscription:
The inscription is in three languages.
The first is supposed to be Hebrew, and according to the brochure it says “In your grace I trusted, Lord.”
I can make out “in your grace,” I can’t quite make out “I trusted,” and the third word is “my God.”
The second language is Greek, and if I’m to believe the brochure, which I no longer do, it says “know thyself” (some kind of clean way to say “mind your own business”?).
The third language is Latin, and it says “The earth is only a brief stop, heaven is the homeland that God keeps for us.” Fair enough. If the stop is brief, might as well make the most of every moment.
The wonders of faith.
I know, I haven’t forgotten the general, the parachuting priests, and the mother superior.
Stop No. 30: The Augustinian Monastery
This place served as the regional Breton headquarters of the Resistance, the French movement opposing the Germans during World War II. The commander was General Louis-Alexandre Audibert. He first operated out of Nantes, but once the Germans picked up his trail, he moved to the Augustinian monastery in Malestroit.
That didn’t help him, and he was arrested by the Gestapo. He endured severe torture that left him deaf in one ear, but he never talked. He was deported to Buchenwald, where he was finally liberated by General Patton’s forces. His wife, Claire, was less fortunate. She was imprisoned at Ravensbrück, where she was killed in the gas chamber “by taking the place of an 18-year-old girl” (that’s what it says on Google).
I saluted them both.
The parachuting priests. According to the brochure, they too made it to the Augustinian monastery. These were Free France soldiers who parachuted in the night before D-Day, together with 24,000 Americans and British, with the mission of securing the flanks of the Normandy landing beaches. On August 18, several of them reached the village of Saint-Marcel, near Malestroit, where they were surrounded by the Germans, fled, and found refuge in our monastery, disguised as priests. Under the robes, of course, they wore their uniforms, hoping it would grant them protection if they were caught.
Before we get to the mother superior, I have to correct a mistake I once fell for myself, until I learned the truth.
It’s commonly believed that France surrendered to the Germans with almost no fighting. That’s not true. In the two weeks of actual combat, 92,000 French soldiers were killed. Yes, the strategy was poor from the start (the Maginot Line, “the Ardennes are impassable to armor,” and so on). But the troops fought, and fought hard.
Yvonne Aimée, also known as Yvonne Aimée Bouvier, the mother superior of the convent. She worked there from 1927 until her death in 1951. She founded a modern clinic where she treated wounded Resistance fighters, whom she hid, but also wounded Germans. She was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and escaped, miraculously of course. After the war she received the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration.
I think we’re done.
We’ll leave Malestroit over the “New Bridge,” which offers a lovely view of the Notre-Dame Bridge, the one we entered the town by:
See you around, Francophiles.
Danny
Want to Stay at Danny’s Château?
If you enjoyed this article and would like to meet Danny in person, you’re warmly invited to come stay with him at the château. You can read more about it in this article.
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