They Are Placed Quite
Close Together, Too Close, It Seems, In View Of Their Enormity And
Mass.
There is not enough air between them, and the closeness of their
juxtaposition disconcerts you more, perhaps, even than their
massiveness.
The avenue which I have followed in an easterly direction abuts on as
disconcerting a chaos of granite as exists in Thebes - the hall of the
feasts of Thothmes III. 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.
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