Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires (1791) - Page 12

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INVOCATION.

when the dream of life is finished, what use will its agitations have been, if they leave no trace of utility!

O ruins! I will return to you to take your lessons! I will place myself again in the peace of your solitudes; and there, far from the distressing spectacle of passions, I will love men through memories; I will occupy myself with their happiness; and mine will consist of the idea of having hastened it.

THE RUINS,

MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS

OF EMPIRES.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Journey.

In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmed, emperor of the Turks; at the time when the Nogai Tartars an ethnic group of Turkic people were driven from the Krimée Crimea, and when a Muslim prince, of the blood of Gengiz-Khan Genghis Khan, became the vassal and the guard of a Christian woman and queen (*);

(*) This refers to the year 1784. The reader is asked not to lose sight of this period. See the notes at the end of the volume.