The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornély, who, according to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint's day, the thirteenth of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church.
[Illustration: <u>_Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country_</u>]
The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornély are remarkable works of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of "_l'art nouveau_."
To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many curious stone monuments.
The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical art as a "Jesse Tree."
Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthièvre, half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times (now a hundred years ago):
"_Mourir plus d'un soldat à son prince fidèle, un prêtre fidèle à son Dieu._"
The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile.
Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves out of sheer inability to find fault with it.