Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires

CHAPTER III. / THE PHANTOM.

consist these celestial anathemas on these regions? Where is this divine curse that perpetuates the abandonment of these countrysides? Say, monuments of past times! have the heavens changed their laws, and the earth its course? Has the sun extinguished its fires in space? Do the seas no longer raise their clouds? Do the rains and dews remain fixed in the air? Do the mountains hold back their springs? Have the streams dried up? And are the plants deprived of seeds and fruits? Answer, race of lies and iniquity, has God disturbed this primitive and constant order that he himself assigned to nature? Has heaven denied the earth, and the earth its inhabitants, the goods that they formerly granted them? If nothing has changed in creation, if the same means that existed still subsist, what then is the reason that the present races are not what the past races were? Ah! it is falsely that you accuse fate and the Divinity! it is wrongly that you trace back to God the cause of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race, if

if these places are desolate, if powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God who caused their ruin? Is it his hand that overturned these walls, undermined these temples, mutilated these columns? Or is it the hand of man? Is it the arm of God that carried the sword into the city, and fire into the countryside, which killed the people, burned the harvests, uprooted the trees and ravaged the cultures? Or is it the arm of man? And when after the devastation of the harvests, famine occurred, was it the vengeance of God that produced it, or the insane fury of man? When in the famine the people fed on foul food, if the plague followed, was it the anger of God that sent it, or the imprudence of man? When war, famine and plague harvested the inhabitants, if the earth remained deserted, is it God who depopulated it? Is it his greed that pillages the laborer, ravages the producing fields, and devastates the countrysides, or the greed of those who govern? Is it his pride that arouses homicidal wars, or the pride of

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