Nowhere on
earth have men conceived such dwellings.
Columns after columns, higher
and more massive than towers, follow one another so closely, in an
excess of accumulation, that they produce a feeling almost of
suffocation. They mount into the clear sky and sustain there traverses
of stone which you scarcely dare to contemplate. One hesitates to
advance; a feeling comes over you that you are become infinitesimally
small and as easy to crush as an insect. The silence grows
preternaturally solemn. The stars through all the gaps in the fearful
ceilings seem to send their scintillations to you in an abyss. It is
cold and clear and blue.
The central bay of this hypostyle is in the same line as the road I
have been following since I left the hall of Thothmes. It prolongs and
magnifies as in an apotheosis that same long avenue, for the gods and
kings, which was the glory of Thebes, and which in the succession of
the ages nothing has contrived to equal. The columns which border it
are so gigantic[*] that their tops, formed of mysterious full-blown
petals, high up above the ground on which we crawl, are completely
bathed in the diffuse clearness of the sky. And enclosing this kind of
nave on either side, like a terrible forest, is another mass of
columns - monster columns, of an earlier style, of which the capitals
close instead of opening, imitating the buds of some flower which will
never blossom.
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