Those that remain intact--white faces beneath their Sphinx's headgear--open their eyes wide and smile.
This was formerly the principal entrance, and the office of these colossi was to welcome the multitudes.

But now the gates of honour flanked by obelisks of red granite, are obstructed by a litter of enormous ruins.

And the courtyard has become a place voluntarily closed, where nothing of the outside world is any longer to be seen.

In moments of silence, one can abstract oneself from all the neighbouring modern things, and forget the hour, the day, the century even, in the midst of these gigantic figures, whose smile disdains the flight of ages.

The granites within which we are immured--and in such terrible company--shut out everything save the point of an old neighbouring minaret which shows now against the blue of the sky: a humble graft of Islam which grew here amongst the ruins some centuries ago, when the ruins themselves had already subsisted for three thousand years--a little mosque built on a mass of debris, which it new protects with its inviolability.