People have pretended that when they were not tombs the “dolmens” and “trilithes” were altars, that the “fairy rocks” were assembling places or sepultures, and that the business meetings at the time of the Druids were held in the “cromlechs.”  M. de Cambry saw in the “swaying rocks” the emblems of the suspended world.  The “barrows” and “gals-gals” have undoubtedly been tombs; and as for the “men-hirs,” people went so far as to pretend that they had a form which led to the deduction that a certain cult reigned throughout lower Brittany.  O chaste immodesty of science, you respect nothing, not even a peulven!

A reverie, no matter how undefined, may lead up to splendid creations, when it starts from a fixed point.  Then the imagination, like a soaring hippogriff, stamps the earth with all its might and journeys straightway towards infinite regions.  But when it applies itself to a subject devoid of plastic art and history, and tries to extract a science from it, and to reconstruct a world, it remains even poorer and more barren than the rough stone to which the vanity of some praters has lent a shape and dignified with a history.

To return to the stones of Carnac (or rather, to leave them), if anyone should, after all these opinions, ask me mine, I would emit an irresistible, irrefutable, incontestable one, which would make the tents of M. de la Sauvagere stagger, blanch the face of the Egyptian Penhoet, break up the zodiac of Cambry and smash the python into a thousand bits.  This is my opinion:  the stones of Carnac are simply large stones!

* * * * *

So we returned to the inn and dined heartily, for our five hours’ tramp had sharpened our appetites.  We were served by the hostess, who had large blue eyes, delicate hands, and the sweet face of a nun.  It was not yet bedtime, and it was too dark to work, so we went to the church.

This is small, although it has a nave and side-aisles like a city church.  Short, thick stone pillars support its wooden roof, painted in blue, from which hang miniature vessels, votive offerings that were promised during raging storms.  Spiders creep along their sails and the riggings are rotting under the dust.  No service was being held, and the lamp in the choir burned dimly in its cup filled with yellow oil; overhead, through the open windows of the darkened vault, came broad rays of white light and the sound of the wind rustling in the tree-tops.  A man came in to put the chairs in order, and placed two candles in an iron chandelier riveted to the stone pillar; then he pulled into the middle of the aisle a sort of stretcher with a pedestal, its black wood stained with large white spots.  Other people entered the church, and a priest clad in his surplice passed us.  There was the intermittent tinkling of a bell and then the door of the church opened wide.  The jangling sound of the little bell mingled with the tones of another and their sharp, clear tones swelled louder as they came nearer and nearer to us.