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CHAPTER EIGHT

St. Céré adjoins the Bave River and has a population of some three and a half thousand only, and yet it seemed very busy when we were there. Our destination was, naturally, the old part going back to the fourteen hundreds and the re-built seventeenth century church of St. Spérie. We walked along the Rue de la Republic festooned from end to end with shrubs and trees and stopped in front of yet another plaque to the Resistance. These maquisards died in May 1944 (before the Allied landing) and their executioners were once again the Das Reich Division. The town has its old Tudor style quarter around the Place du Mercardial but like Salers, it has a life of its own beyond the tourists.

Nearby Château Montal is most assuredly worth a visit, although the château itself had closed just as we got there. The grounds are simple and the château is, somehow, perfectly situated. The story is that in 1523 the owner of the land had a mansion built for her eldest son Robert, who was in Italy fighting a rather pointless war for François Premier. Robert was killed and the mother in her distress had a motto chiselled underneath the window which had acted as her lookout: “Hope is No More (plus d’espoir).” Luckily she had a second son Dordé, but he was a “church dignitary”, a priest presumably. Anyhow, he came out, as it were, and had nine children and I assume that one or some of them were boys. The château went through rather turbulent times in the intervening years but was completely restored by a rich Frenchman late in the nineteenth century who then gave it to the State in 1913. Its situation, its park and the building itself are all lovely. I particularly liked a rustic latticed gate beautifully constructed in a diamond pattern.

A village which is off the main road on the little D118 and very much worth the short detour is Loubressac. It’s on a hill or perhaps a small mountain, but you could easily pass it by. Well, please don’t. Allow Loubressac to draw you off the main road.

There’s a small parking area under the trees (chestnut from memory) by the World Wars monument. Having read the announcement and glanced down the list of names, in case I should see an Egan, I went, quite naturally to the little but old cemetery. There’s a wonderful view from its gates which takes in part of the valley of the Bave and the Castelnau fortress. To my mind, the peace and quiet of a well-kept cemetery is similar to the peace and quiet of an old, but empty, church.

I left the cemetery with reluctance, and walked on. Outside the church, I stopped and tried to decipher the beautifully lettered acrylic sign. My French had deserted me and the church was closed. The thing about Loubressac is firstly its authenticity and secondly its compactness. The roads are narrow, laneways almost, and every house and tower, every turret and roof is genuine, even if some have been restored. The gardens are alive, the flowers are blooming and the place is occupied. In the space of a half hour you have had a feast. We journeyed on.

Suddenly you are in Carennac and underneath the massive walls of the château. There are places to park and a low stone wall to sit on and watch the river. When you feel like it you walk thirty or forty metres, turn left up the hill and there in a cul-de-sac, or a narrow courtyard is the church of St. Pierre, Romanesque, of course, and with another one of those side doors. Above and around the door are joyful carvings of Christ and his followers but the frieze is mainly of animals. It is a church of great charm and peace. Do not neglect to see the cloisters while you are there.

Perhaps the most famous man of Carennac was François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fênelon — a long name for a man who appeared to be a lover of simple things. His family owned the elegant fifteenth century château some distance down the Dordogne towards Carsac. François Fénelon was born in the château in 1651 and is described in my encyclopaedia as “archbishop, mystical theologian and a man of letters.”

Here is a little quote from Francois: “Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.” Now, you almost know the man.

He finished his studies in Paris and was involved for a time in a college where he instructed women who were converting from Protestantism to Catholicism. In 1685 Louis X1V revoked the Edit of Nantes that had granted a measure of religious freedom to Protestants, and persecution of them was heightened. François had the courage to speak out against that persecution.

His next appointment, despite his outspokenness on religious matters, was as tutor to the future Louis XV. During his tutorship, or rather because of it, he began Les Aventures de Télémaque (the adventures of Telemachus in search of his father Ulysses), which he completed in 1699.

François continued his searches for spiritual truths and ran foul of the powerful cleric Bossuet, his one-time friend. It was clear that François Fénélon could not be silenced and so he was exiled to his diocese at Cambrai, in northern France on the Escaut River.

There’s a Iovely and partly ruined tower in the valley below the bridge in the equally lovely village of Carennac and some writers maintain that this was the tower in which Fénélon wrote. The lady at the information office in Carennac said that this was not so. She pointed instead to a tower near the wall of the château. “That was the tower,” she said most emphatically. If you walk back down to your car by the river or even to the bridge over the valley you can see the top of this square tower. I think she was right. Before you get into your car, have a careful look at the wall of the château where you will see a striking bust of François. Carennac is a village of great beauty.

You can linger in Carennac.

But going back to Fénélon’s fame as a writer — I must say I’ve not read the Adventures of Telemachus and it is a while since I’ve read The Odyssey. Oddly enough one of the most vivid recollections I have of Homer’s story is how the enchantress Circe turned some of Ulysses’ (Odysseus’) companions into swine. I wish that the same lady would re-visit the Western world and turn the occasional CEO and company director into swine, she would be most welcome. But perhaps, come to think of it, there is really nothing further to do.

On the flight over to Paris I kept a resolve that I had made and I read Homer’s other book, The Iliad. What a task! I don’t often use an exclamation mark, but it is deservedly appropriate after that short sentence. The argument between Achilles and Agamemnon gives promise of something worthwhile but thereafter it descends into a description of the manner in which man butchers his fellow man. And all the while Achilles sulked. It was easy to grow tired of Achilles, and Agamemnon too, for that matter.

Our bed and our meal for the evening were near Lacave on the Ouysse River and we wandered in that direction along the southern side of the Dordogne. It was time for coffee which I like to drink at 3.45 (or 15.45) precisely and eventually we saw a pleasant little café. There were only two tables taken and a dog lay under one. We sat down and the aroma of a good roast wafted out to us. The café had shown its proprietorship by enclosing a generous section of the foot path with potted box hedges all immaculately watered and clipped.

I was sipping my coffee and reflecting of things French including their formal gardens when a middle aged woman walked past lead by a trotting, head-up, poodle. The poodle had been artistically clipped and clipped, and clipped — it was all gutters, ridges and plateaux. Arrogant creatures those poodles. The French have a mania for topiary — they’ll clip anything: country hedges, trees up to twenty or thirty metres in height (as at Fontainbleau), parterres around vegetable gardens, formal gardens, dogs…There is no end to their tidiness and their formality.

The first formal garden that amazed and utterly delighted me was Vaux-le-Vicomte. We went there by coach many years ago in the late autumn. I had seen glossy pictures of the view of the embroidered parterres from the steps of the château with the Farnese Hercules in the distance and frankly it left me cold. There were about ten of us only, on this huge coach and the guide was able to give us his full attention and display his knowledge; “we are going past the stables, poor Fouquet, the great Le Nôtre, one should always see a French garden from a height, e.g. the first floor (not the ground floor)” et cetera, et cetera. He rabbited on. We climbed the steps and stood on the terrace and then we turned and looked across the tapestry of box, lawn and gravel. Magnificent.

You need a whole day to see Vaux-le-Vicomte — to stroll amongst its clipped yew trees, to marvel at the close-trimmed hedges with the overhanging copper beeches and chestnuts. It is masterly. And the pauvre Fouquet who presented such splendour to his lord the magnificent Louis X1V, what did he get for his efforts? He got the suppressed jealousy of a pampered but powerful monarch and he also got exile, which Louis in his kindness and generosity “commuted to life imprisonment.”

And what about the master gardener André Le Nôtre? André got the construction of Versailles, everlasting fame and a surprisingly long life for those times.

There’s a formal French garden in the Dordogne valley not far from Souillac and Sarlat (in fact almost midway between them and slightly to the north) and it is most certainly worth a visit. I don’t say it rivals Vaux-le-Vicomte or Versailles but Eyrignac is quite beautiful and impeccably kept. The château has a charm that Vaux cannot match and the hostesses who conduct you on the tour are just as charming. There are roses, lawns, hornbeams, yews, boxes — it’s all there. See Vaux, you should, but see Eyrignac in the Valley of the Dordogne too, and have lunch by your car in the shade of the oak trees in and around the car park.