Excerpt from Makers of Song

Now the Castle of Ventadour, in Limousin, Provence, was a goodly place and a fair. Indeed it would be hard to fancy a more rarely perfect spot in which to be born and to come to manhood, and its poetic loveliness spurred the inspiration, as it filled the daily life, of the boy Bernart.

The hamlet of Moustier Ventadour may still be seen. A league and a half east of Egletons it is, and the ruins of the Castle are a quarter of a mile farther on. The ruins of Ventadour! It is as sorrowful an image as that of faded roses or dead youth: alas, that even Ventadour should have known the destructive touch of time!

But at the period of which I write, - the early half of the twelfth century, - it was a splendid pile set high upon a hill, in a country of wild and picturesque beauty. Crowding about the stone walls, every kind of tree possible to Provencal soil lifted its heavy leafage to the warm blue sky, and afforded nesting-space to the swallows and nightingales, the ring-doves and larks, that made that region melodious.

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