an open field.

I was about to forget the tumuli! Those that are composed of silica and
soil are called "barrows" in high-flown language, while the simple heaps
of stones are "gals-gals."

People have pretended that when they were not tombs the "dolmens" and
"trilithes" were altars, that the "fairy rocks" were assembling places
or sepultures, and that the business meetings at the time of the Druids
were held in the "cromlechs." M. de Cambry saw in the "swaying rocks"
the emblems of the suspended world. The "barrows" and "gals-gals" have
undoubtedly been tombs; and as for the "men-hirs," people went so far as
to pretend that they had a form which led to the deduction that a
certain cult reigned throughout lower Brittany. O chaste immodesty of
science, you respect nothing, not even a peulven!

A reverie, no matter how undefined, may lead up to splendid creations,
when it starts from a fixed point. Then the imagination, like a soaring
hippogriff, stamps the earth with all its might and journeys straightway
towards infinite regions. But when it applies itself to a subject devoid
of plastic art and history, and tries to extract a science from it, and
to reconstruct a world, it remains even poorer and more barren than the
rough stone to which the vanity of some praters has lent a shape and
dignified with a history.

To return to the stones of Carnac (or rather, to leave them), if anyone
should, after all these opinions, ask me mine, I would emit an
irresistible, irrefutable, incontestable one, which would make the tents
of M. de la Sauvagère stagger, blanch the face of the Egyptian Penhoët,
break up the zodiac of Cambry and smash the python into a thousand bits.