Chapter 2 - A Royal Abbey, Trves

I knelt there - for a man will be brought to his knees whoever he may be - with my face turned to the altar, with my eyes on the long narrow window streaming an old-gold radiance, and my dreams on something dim, and sweet and impossible. Just then the bell tolled, a soft rounded note like the echo of a sound, as if meant only for the ears of the ghosts who haunt this quiet place


Chapter 5 - Angoulme, Brantme

As I neared the hotel, I was approached by a man who asked for directions. He was wearing a dark raincoat and looked like an ancient Phoenician who had lost his way back to his ship. He had a thin, sharp, Semitic cast of face, with guarded dark eyes that seemed capable of profound melancholy. I thought I recognized in him Saint Augustine as a young man. I have quite a few questions to ask St. Augustine, my favorite saint, but unfortunately it was in this case a matter of mistaken identity


Chapter 6 - Prehistoric Dordogne

A dog named Robot was responsible for the discovery, in the autumn of 1940, of the famous cave paintings of Lascaux, within five miles of Le Moustier. Out for a run with his master and three other teen-age boys, he literally fell into the cave. The boys, following, burrowed fifteen to eighteen feet straight down, and found by the uncertain light of a flashlight that they were in a high narrow passage, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with paintings of animals in red, yellow, and black. There are some eight hundred in all.


Chapter 7 - Sarlat

At night, especially under the witching moon, the streets of Sarlat take you back to old Aquitania. At sundown the little streets near the cathedral are perfect. There is nothing to be seen that could be later than the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Then, with the moonlight falling from overhanging stories and slanting from eaves in the sharp black and white of half-timbered houses silent in sleep, old memories come tiptoeing back to town. It takes precious little imagination to visualize the long procession of abbots and bishops, dukes and knights who have walked over this stage in their hour, leaving behind them both good and bad.


Chapter 8 - Cahors

For five hundred years or so in Cahors, the antique Divona Cadurcorum named after the tribe of the Cadurci, the ordered life of Rome was lived within its walls. Perhaps most men thought it permanent. Only the hills knew better as they brooded under the sky; only the grass knew better, only the wind from the north beating on Divona in the wild nights may have whispered of the death of Rome and the coming of the wild men, armed with fire and sword yet afraid to sleep under a roof


Chapter 9 - Moissac, Quercy

It was a brave, airy morning. A breeze blew carelessly down the valley of the Lot, the beautiful valley. It seemed to lay its hand upon the meadows, softly stroking the grass until it became polished green tile, like a dance floor. The river's surface flickered in the light, as if there were a million green butterflies upon it. I looked back upon Cahors, at its towers anointed by the sun, their pointed roofs resplendent like pyramids of precious jewels.


Chapter 10 - Albi, Monestis

The Entombment of Monestis is a masterpiece that cannot be adequately described. As I stood in the soft gloom of the little chapel with Mary and John and Joseph and Nicodeme and the holy women, I fancied I was with them, sitting outdoors, dreaming, loving the fine weather, and quietly thinking of the days when they walked our earth, talked to men and women of their own flesh and blood, and finally took their departure. As the hushed light flows over the statues in the quiet restful chapel of Monestis it seemed I was getting a glimpse of heaven.


Chapter 10 - Cordes

The low sun was a blood-red ball and the compact town a solid mass of black blending into the deepening violet of the sky. I sought a place to rest at a caf table to watch the slow pageant of life through the square. This is a practice always possible and always agreeable in these little towns of France. A caf is always at hand from which to look upon a leisurely world, making sightseeing pleasant in itself. The rustling leaves of the plane trees, the warmth of the dwindling day, the gabled faade opposite, the yawning of a dog too lazy to go back to his master, the silky sense of being wrapped in a cocoon of sunshine, and the knowledge that others are enjoying the same sense of contentment.


Chapter 13 - The Gorges of the Tarn

Approaching the river Gard, I saw through the young green of the trees, backed by the deep blue of the sky, a great object in golden brown; it was broken into arches, which, with the appearance of fairy-like lightness and fragility, are of such immense strength and resistance that they defy time and endure through the ages withstanding the onslaughts of destructive Man and devastating tempests.


Chapter 14 - Pont du Gard, Nmes

It is now a serene place, this Arena. Warm and yellow under the morning sun, there was no movement except the flutter of a white pigeon over my head, no sound except that of my footsteps on the stones. The mystery and glamour of a vanished world took hold of me as I sat on the very stone seats that Roman officials had once occupied. I imagined the colored awnings, the togas, the rose garlands, and the many-hued robes of the rich patricians, and the great fans worked by white-clad slaves, while the people in the stands high and low dealt life or death to the fighters below, as the fancy took them, thumbs turned up or down.