e 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.

The cloisters of Carennac, built from plans furnished by that fountain
of ecclesiastical art in the Middle Ages, the monastery of Cluny,
must, judging from the remnants of tracery in the arcades, and the
delicately carved bosses of the vaults, have been once a spot where
the spirit of Gothic architecture found delight. Now the spirit of
ruin dwells there, leading the bramble and the celandine to conquer,
year after year, some fresh territory upon the ancient quadrangle's
crumbling wall. Above, where the sunbeam strikes upon the wrinkled
stone, the lizard basks and the bee fresh from its hive hums as
blithely among the yellow flowers of the celandine as if the blocks
raised by men in their reaching t