Symptoms of ruin. Vast buildings. Several, one on top of the other, appartments, rooms, some temples, galleries, lanterns, stairways, fountains, viewpoints, statues. Fissures and cracks. Dampness resulting from a resevoir situated near the sky. How to warn peoples and nations? let us whisper warnings into the ears of the most intelligent.

High up, a column cracks and its two ends are displaced. Nothing has collapsed as yet. I can no longer find the way out. I go down, then climb back up. A labyrinth tower. I never succeeded in leaving. I live forever in a building on the point of collapsing, a building undermined by a secret malady - I work out in my mind, to amuse myself, if such a prodigious mass of stones, marbles, statues, walls, which are about to collide with each other, will be greatly sullied by that multitude of brains, human flesh and shattered bones - I see such terrible things in my dreams that sometimes I wish I could sleep no more, if I could be sure not to be so weary.

- Charles Baudelaire.