"Since you are determined to go, take my advice. You must be going to Saint-Malo. Now, then, do not go by the way of Dol. There are two roads,--one leading through Dol, and the other along the coast. There is very little difference in their length. The road along the coast passes through Saint-Georges-de-Brehaigne, Cherrueix, and Hirelle-Vivier. You leave Dol to the south, and Cancale to the north, and at the end of this street, citizen, you will come to a place where the two roads fork,--that of Dol to the left, that of Saint-Georges-de-Brehaigne to the right. Mark my words: if you go to Dol, you will plunge headlong into the massacre; so do not take the left-hand turning, but keep to the right." "Thank you," said the traveller. And he set spurs to his horse. As it was now quite dark, he soon vanished in the gloom, and the innkeeper lost sight of him. When the traveller reached the end of the street where the two roads forked, he heard the voice of the innkeeper calling to him from the distance,-- "Turn to your right!" He turned to the left. II. DOL. [Illustration 076] Dol, a Franco-Spanish city in Brittany, as the old records call it, is not really a city; it is a street,--a grand old Gothic street, with rows of houses supported by pillars on both sides of it. These houses are not built in straight lines, but stand irregularly, now and then elbowing into the street, which is, to be sure, a very wide one. The rest of the town is a mere network of lanes, all leading into this great diametrical street,--emptying into it, one might say, like streams into a river, with Mont-Dol towering above it. The city, with neither gates nor walls, could not have withstood a siege; but the street was quite capable of sustaining one. The houses, like promontories, which but fifty years ago were still standing, and the two pillared galleries bordering the street, made it a strong and well-nigh impregnable redoubt. Each of the houses was a fortress in itself, and the enemy would have found himself forced to capture them one by one. Almost in the middle of the street stood the old market. The innkeeper of the Croix-Branchard had told the truth; a furious battle was raging in Dol even while he was speaking. A nocturnal duel between the Whites who arrived in the morning and the Blues who appeared at night had burst suddenly upon the town. The forces were unequal, the Whites numbering six thousand, while the Blues were only fifteen hundred; but they fought with equal fury. Surprising as it may seem, it was the fifteen hundred who attacked the six thousand.