Our immense--our naked solitude pervades us.

An exquisite emotion takes hold of me while we are slowly climbing the steep and methodical way.

There is something human in the stairway; in the inevitable shapes of its spiral and its steps cut out of the quick, in the rhythmic repetition of its steps.

A round skylight pierces the sloping roof up there, and it is the only light for this part of the people's house, this poor internal city.
The darkness which runs down the walls of the well, whence we are striving to emerge step by step, conceals our laborious climb towards that gap of daylight.

Shadowed and secret as we are, it seems to me that we are mounting to heaven.
Oppressed by a common languor, we at last sat down side by side on a step.