Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires

CHAPTER II. / THE MEDITATION.

the Assyrian on the banks of the Tigris, the Chaldean on those of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria, and the warlike states of the Philistines, and the commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, I said to myself, today almost depopulated, then counted a hundred powerful cities. Its countryside was covered with villages, towns and hamlets (b). From all sides one saw only cultivated fields, frequented roads, and crowded dwellings... Ah! what has become of those ages of abundance and life? What has become of so many brilliant creations of the hand of man? Where are they, those ramparts of Nineveh, those walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those temples of Baalbek and Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre, those shipyards of Arwad, those workshops of Sidon, and that multitude of sailors, pilots, merchants, and soldiers? And those laborers, and those harvests, and those herds, and all this creation of living beings with which the face of the earth once

prided itself? Alas! I have traversed it, this ravaged land! I have visited the places that were the theater of so much splendor; and I have seen only abandonment and solitude... I searched for the ancient peoples and their works; and I saw only the trace of them, similar to that which the foot of a passerby leaves on the dust. The temples are collapsed, the palaces are overturned, the ports are filled in, the cities are destroyed, and the earth, stripped of inhabitants, is now nothing more than a desolate place of sepulchers... Great God! from where do such disastrous revolutions come? For what reasons has the fortune of these regions changed so much? Why have so many cities been destroyed? Why has this ancient population not reproduced and perpetuated itself?

Thus given over to my reverie, new reflections constantly presented themselves to my thought. Everything, I continued, misleads my judgment, and throws my heart into trouble and uncertainty. When these regions enjoyed what composes the glory and happiness of men, it was infidel peoples

original: "peuples infidèles"