We Climbed And Climbed, With Many A Muted Hope And Many A Muted Fear Of
The Mechanism Which Carried Us
So safely, and then we ran across a
stretch of comparative level and reached the last station, under the
cliff
On which the local hotel stood, with the mighty ruin behind it.
Our passengers flocked up to the terrace of the hotel, much shoved and
shouldered by automobiles bearing the company which seems proper to
those vehicles, and dispersed themselves at the many little tables set
about for tea, and the glory of the matchless outlook. While one could
yet have the ruin mostly to one's self, it seemed the most favorable
moment to visit the crumbling walls and broken tower, whose fragments
strewed the slopes around. The tower was of Augustus, and the fortress
into which it was turned in the Middle Ages was of unknown authority,
but the ruin was the work of Marshal Villars, who blew up both trophy
and stronghold sometime in the French king's wars with the imperialists
in the first half of the eighteenth century. The destruction was
incomplete, though probably sufficient for the purpose, but as a ruin,
nothing could be more admirable. There seems to be at present something
like a restoration going on; it has not gone very far, however; it has
developed some fragments of majestic pillars, and some breadths of Roman
brick-work; a few spaces about the base of the tower are cleared; but
the rehabilitation will probably never proceed to such an extreme that
you may not sit down on some carven remnant of the past, and closing
your eyes to the surrounding glory of alp and sea find yourself again on
the Palatine or amid the memorials of the Forum.
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