In Transit in Rennes

Abstract

In arriving in Rennes Duhem could derive some comfort from being much closer to the Isles d’Ouessant, his favorite sailing place, and to the Gulf of Morbihan where he had spent some memorable summers as a teenager. As to Rennes itself he used to speak years later to his daughter about the ‘sweet quiet’ of Bretagne’s capital.^l To someone like Duhem, living mentally in Paris, the intellectual life of Rennes could but appear a mere somnolence. In 1893 Rennes was a small place even in comparison with Lille.² Time seemed to stand still in the old town, stretching from the church of Bonne Nouvelle to the Cathedral of St. Pierre, where many medieval houses had escaped the great fire of 1720 which forced a rebuilding of much of Rennes. They were quietly waiting for restoration and sanitation which came at long last in the early 1960s when tourism found business value in the picturesque, though rat-infested, winding streets and narrow alleys.