"For my part, my thoughts took a decidedly sepulchral turn: I thought of my dead and of all the dead of the earth, and said to myself, this darkness and the silence of their last resting-place is like this: to this we must all come at last. No vicissitudes of earth, no changes of seasons, no sound of storm or thunder penetrate here; winter and summer, day and night, peace or war, it is all one; a world beyond the reach of change, because beyond the reach of life."