The Others, Ranged On The Three Sides Of The Courtyard, Stand Upright Behind Colonnades, But Look As If They Were About To Issue Thence And To Stride Rapidly Towards Me.

Some broken and battered, have lost their faces and preserve only their intimidating attitude.

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. How many treasures and relics and documents are hidden and guarded by this mosque of the peristyle! For none would dare to dig in the ground within its sacred walls.

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