They lie in wait for the parties of tourists who arrive from time to time.

For the great symbols, during the hundreds and thousands of years that have elapsed since men ceased to venerate them, have nevertheless scarcely ever been alone, especially on nights with a full moon.

Men of all races, of all times, have come to wander round them, vaguely attracted by their immensity and mystery.

In the days of the Romans they had already become symbols of a lost significance, legacies of a fabulous antiquity, but people came curiously to contemplate them, and tourists in toga and in peplus carved their names on the granite of their bases for the sake of remembrance.
The tourists who have come to-night, and upon whom have pounced the black-cloaked Bedouin guides, wear cap and ulster or furred greatcoat; their intrusion here seems almost an offence; but, alas, such visitors become more numerous in each succeeding year.

The great town hard by--which sweats gold now that men have started to buy from it its dignity and its soul--is become a place of rendezvous and holiday for the idlers and upstarts of the whole world.