Explore "Arsène Lupin, Super-Sleuth" by Maurice Leblanc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Strange spectacle! Below them in a deep arena from which the water had retired, over all the ground in the circle of cliffs were the ruins of monuments and temples, still standing, but with truncated columns, dislocated steps, scattered arches, roofless, without pediments or cornices, a forest decapitated by lightning, but a forest the dead trees of which held still all the nobility and all the beauty of ardent life. Through the whole of it ran the Roman road, a triumphal road, bordered with broken statues, framed by symmetrical temples, it passed between the pillars of demolished arches and came up the bank to the grotto in which they offered their sacrifices.
All of it was still dripping, shining, covered in places by a cloak of ooze; and fragments of marble or gold sparkled in the sun. On the right and on the left wound two long silver ribands. They were the waterfalls which had once more found the bed of their stone canals and poured their waters along them.