'
These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, only
that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the
same band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the
small square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine
have no architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court,
then comes a well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the
dead were, a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, which are
crowned with boldly-projecting cornices, surmounted by an abacus. And
here, till the pressing want of food drove me back, I remained: for more
and more the earth over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I
ask myself this question: 'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and
become a small earth, precisely her copy, extravagantly weird and
fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly mystic--morose and
turbulent--fitful, and deranged, and sad--like her?'
* * * * *
A whole month of that voyage, from May the 15th to June the 13th, I
wasted at the Andaman Islands near Malay: for that any old Chinaman
could be alive in Pekin began, after some time, to seem the most
quixotic notion that ever entered a human brain; and these jungled
islands, to which I came after a shocking vast orgy one night at
Calcutta, when I fired not only the city but the river, pleased my fancy
to such an extent, that at one time I intended to abide there.
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