ways carried the human seed for
future harvest towards the west. And for a long while now the cradle of
humanity had been stricken with destruction and death, as if indeed the
nations could only advance by stages, leaving exhausted soil, ruined
cities, and degenerate populations behind, as they marched from orient to
occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of
the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been
reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly
numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to
the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon
with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet
seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by
the hidden forces of civilisation from east to west, it marked each day's
journey with ruins; and how frightful was the sterility nowadays
displayed by the cradle of History, that Asia and that Egypt, which had
once more lapsed into childhood, immobilised in ignorance and degeneracy
amidst the ruins of ancient cities that once had been queens of the
world!

It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not
unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it
seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for
the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare,
fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of
the growing darkness. And after passing the deep gap of the Corso, which
was also deserted amidst the pallid radiance of its electric lights, the
Palazzo Torlonia appeared on the right-hand, with one wing ripped open by
the picks of demolishers, whilst on the left, farther up, the Palazzo
Colonna showed its long, mournful facade and closed windows, as if, now
that it was deserted by its masters and void of its ancient pomp, it
awaited the demolishers in its turn.

Then, as the cab at a slower pace began to climb the ascent of the Via
Nazionale, Pierre's reverie continued. Was not Rome also stricken, had
not the hour come for her to disappear amidst that destruction which the
nations on the march invariably left behind them? Greece, Athens, and
Sparta slumbered beneath their glorious memories, and were of no account
in the world of to-day. Moreover, the growing paralysis had already
invaded the lower portion of the It