She ran up stairs in front of us beckoning and calling.
The staircase is long, for the tower is high. The bright daylight passes
through the loop-holes like an arrow. When you put your head through one
of these openings, you can see the ocean, which seems to grow wider and
wider, and the crude colour of the sky, which seems to grow larger and
larger, till you are afraid you will lose yourself in it. Vessels look
like launches and their masts like walking-sticks. Eagles must think we
look like ants. I wonder whether they really see us. Do they know that
we have cities and steeples and triumphal arches?
When we arrived on the platform, and although the battlement reached to
our chest, we could not help experiencing the sensation one always feels
at a great height from the earth. It is a sort of voluptuous uneasiness
mingled with fear and delight, pride and terror, a battle between one's
mind and one's nerves. You feel strangely happy; you would like to jump,
fly, spread out in the air and be supported by the wind; but your knees
tremble and you dare not go too near the edge.
Still, one night, in olden times, men climbed this tower with ropes.
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