The little river,
like all the tributaries of the upper Dordogne, runs at the bottom of a
deep gorge. Standing upon the brink of it, I perceived that I was about
to enter another sylvan solitude of enchanting beauty. The dense forest
descended the abrupt escarpments to the channel and hid the stream, and
over the leafy masses was that play of sunshine, shadow, and thin vapour
which I had so often watched in a dreamily joyous mood lying at the foot of
some pine in the Vosges.
About half-way down the gorge was a ruinous Romanesque chapel upon a rock,
the polygonal apse being on the very edge of a precipice. At each exterior
angle of the imperfect polygon was a column with a cubiform capital. The
interior was all dilapidated; the floor of the sanctuary had fallen in, but
the altar-stone--a block of granite--remained in its place. This chapel
belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some
subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny,
mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried
away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where
the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was
the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly
told.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63