The bright line in the west moved very slowly upwards, and the rain continued to fall, although less drenchingly than before.  The setting sun strove with the cloud-rack and coloured the veil of vapour that its rays could not pierce.  The nightingales and thrushes in the shrubs, and the finches amidst the later blossoms of the may, took heart again, and the song rose from so many throats near and far that the whole valley of the Dordogne was filled with warbling.  As the birds grew drowsy the frogs came out to spend a happy night on the margins of the pools and the brooks, until their joyful screaming and croaking was a universal chorus.  I was by the side of the broad river that flowed calmly through the fairest meadows.  The face of the stream, the pools in the road, the grass and the leaves, were brightened with the orange glow of a veiled light as of some sacred fire shining in the dusk through clouds of incense.  It grew warmer and warmer until it purpled and died away in grayness and mournful shadow.  The beauty of nature at such moments, when the colours brighten and fade like the powers of the mind as the human day is closing, takes a solemnity that is unearthly, and it is good to be alone with the mystery.

It was dark when I reached Carennac.  I did not realize how wet I was until I sat down in an auberge and tried to make myself comfortable for the night.  It is not easy, however, to be happy under such circumstances.  When the fire on the hearth was stirred up and fed with fresh wood to cook my dinner of barbel that had just had time to die after being pulled out of the Dordogne, I placed myself in the chimney-corner to dry before the welcome blaze.  How cheering is a fire, even in June and in Southern France, on a rainy night, when the sound of sighing trees comes down the chimney and the tired wayfarer’s clothes are sticking to his legs and back!  How cheering, too, at such a time is a dinner, however modest, in the light and warmth of the fire.  A humble barbel has then a more delicate flavour than a salmon-trout cooked with consummate art for people who never know what it is to be hungry.

The next morning I was in the cloisters belonging to the Benedictine priory of Carennac, of which Fenelon was the titular prior.  Hither he came for quietude, and here he wrote his ‘Telemaque,’ a historical trace of which is found in a little island of the Dordogne, which is called ‘L’Ile de Calypso.’  It is recorded that the mother of the great Churchman and writer, when she feared that she would be childless, went on a pilgrimage to Roc-Amadour, and that Fenelon was the consequence of that act of devotion.