perhaps be the cemetery of the Venetians, who inhabited Vannes, situated
six miles from Carnac, and who founded Venice, as everybody knows.
Another man wrote that these Venetians, conquered by Caesar, erected all
those rocks solely in a spirit of humility and in order to honour their
victor. But people were getting tired of the cemetery theory, the
serpent and the zodiac; they set out again and this time found a Druidic
temple.

The few documents that we possess, scattered through Pliny and Dionysius
Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places for their
ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast silence." And
as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a barren country,
where nothing but these gentlemen's fancies has ever grown, the first
grenadier of France, but not, in my estimation, the cleverest man,
followed by Pelloutier and by M. Mahe, (canon of the cathedral of
Vannes), concluded that it was "a Druidic temple in which political
meetings must also have been held."

But all had not been said, and it still remained to be discovered of
what use the empty spaces in the rows could have been. "Let us look for
the reason, a thing nobody has ever thought of before," cried M. Mahe,
and, quoting a sentence from Pomponius Mela: "The Druids teach the
nobility many things and instruct them secretly in caves and forests;"
and this one from Tucain: "You dwell in tall forests," he reached the
conclusion that the Druids not only officiated at the sanctuaries, but
that they also lived and taught in them. "So the monument of Carnac
being a sanctuary, like the Gallic forests," (O power of induction! where
are you leading Father Mahe, canon of Vannes and correspondent of the
Academy of Agriculture at Poitiers?), there is reason to believe that
the intervals, which break up the rows of stones, held rows of houses
where the Druids lived with their families and numerous pupils, and
where the heads of the nation, who, on state days, betook themselves to
the sanctuary, found comfortable lodgings. Good old Druids! Excellent
ecclesiastics! How they have been calumnied! They lived there so
righteously with their families and numerous pupils, and even were
amiable enough to prepare lodgings for the principals of the nation!

But at last came a man imbued with the genius of ancient things and
disdainful of trodden paths. He was able to recognize the rests of a
Roman camp, and, strangely enough, the