Here and there are a few impotent and almost infantine attempts at reparation, undertaken in the ancient epochs of history by the Greeks and Romans.
Columns have been put together, holes have been filled with cement.

But the great blocks lie in confusion, and one feels, even to the point of despair, how impossible it is ever to restore to order such a chaos of crushing, overthrown things--even with the help of legions of workers and machines, and with centuries before you in which to complete the task.
And then, what surprises and oppresses you is the want of clear space, the little room that remained for the multitudes in these halls which are nevertheless immense.

The whole space between the walls was encumbered with pillars.

The temples were half filled with colossal forests of stone.

The men who built Thebes lived in the beginning of time, and had not yet discovered the thing which to us to-day seems so simple--namely, the vault.