Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires

CHAPTER II. / THE MEDITATION.

seas, its ports covered with the tributes of both the East and West Indies; and comparing to the activity of its commerce, to the extent of its navigation, to the richness of its monuments, to the arts and industry of its inhabitants, all that Egypt and Syria could formerly possess of the same kind, I took pleasure in finding the past splendor of Asia in modern Europe: but soon the charm of my reverie was withered by a final point of comparison. Reflecting that such had formerly been the activity of the places I was contemplating: who knows, I said to myself, if such will not one day be the abandonment of our own regions? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee a shallow bay in the Netherlands, there where now, in the whirlwind of so many enjoyments, the heart and the eyes cannot suffice for the multitude of sensations; who knows if a traveler like me will not one day sit on silent ruins, and weep solitary over the ashes of peoples and the memory of their grandeur?

At these words, my eyes filled with tears; and, covering my head with the hem of

my cloak, I gave myself up to somber meditations on human things. Ah! woe to man, I said in my grief! a blind fatality plays with his destiny! A disastrous necessity rules the fate of mortals by chance. But no: it is the decrees of a celestial justice being fulfilled! A mysterious god exercises his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless he has carried against this land a secret anathema; in vengeance for past races, he has struck the present races with a curse. Oh! who will dare sound the depths of the Divinity (c)?

And I remained motionless, absorbed in a profound melancholy.