What kind of feasts were they, that this king gave here, in this forest of thick-set columns, beneath these ceilings, of which the smallest stone, if it fell, would crush twenty men?
In places the friezes, the colonnades, which seem almost diaphanous in the air, are outlined still with a proud magnificence in unbroken alignment against the star-strewn sky.

Elsewhere the destruction is bewildering; fragments of columns, entablatures, bas-reliefs lie about in indescribable confusion, like a lot of scattered wreckage after a world-wide tempest.

For it was not enough that the hand of man should overturn these things.

Tremblings of the earth, at different times, have also come to shake this Cyclops palace which threatened to be eternal.
And all this--which represents such an excess of force, of movement, of impulsion, alike for its erection as for its overthrow--all this is tranquil this evening, oh! so tranquil, although toppling as if for an imminent downfall--tranquil forever, one might say, congealed by the cold and by the night.
I was prepared for silence in such a place, but not for the sounds which I commence to hear.

First of all an osprey sounds the prelude, above my head and so close to me that it holds me trembling throughout its long cry.