DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62355#0241
YERE-BATAN-SERAI.
105
he had loved from his boyhood ; and he listened long, until at length he dropped
asleep to that fond familiar music.
He awoke once more—awoke to madness and despair! He remembered all
—all! and his brain failed beneath the horrors of the retrospect ! He was again
a maniac; and in his first fierce paroxysm, he dashed the still burning torch
into the hissing waters, and the darkness fell upon him—crushed him—pressed
upon his heart, and upon his throat—and who shall say how that wild tragedy
was terminated?
Other, but more prudent attempts have since been made, but, as yet, no
determined limits have been assigned to the Yere-Batan-Serai; in three other
directions the roof has failed, but these have occurred in such distant quarters
of the city, that far from resolving to the curious the question of its extent,
they have only been enabled to arrive at the fact, that it stretches under a great
portion of Constantinople, and even beyond its walls; and that the same appa-
rently endless avenues of arches, multiplied, ad infinitum, on the right and left,
stretch in dim, mysterious, monotonous, and chilling silence beneath the crowded
streets of a busy capital—canopied by darkness, while all is light above—and
yawning like a vast sepulchre to receive the load of human life and human
treasure, which time must ultimately hurl in one huge ruin into its greedy
depths!
The Yere-Batan-Serai is, without any exception, the noblest remain of Roman
intellect and industry in Constantinople
105
he had loved from his boyhood ; and he listened long, until at length he dropped
asleep to that fond familiar music.
He awoke once more—awoke to madness and despair! He remembered all
—all! and his brain failed beneath the horrors of the retrospect ! He was again
a maniac; and in his first fierce paroxysm, he dashed the still burning torch
into the hissing waters, and the darkness fell upon him—crushed him—pressed
upon his heart, and upon his throat—and who shall say how that wild tragedy
was terminated?
Other, but more prudent attempts have since been made, but, as yet, no
determined limits have been assigned to the Yere-Batan-Serai; in three other
directions the roof has failed, but these have occurred in such distant quarters
of the city, that far from resolving to the curious the question of its extent,
they have only been enabled to arrive at the fact, that it stretches under a great
portion of Constantinople, and even beyond its walls; and that the same appa-
rently endless avenues of arches, multiplied, ad infinitum, on the right and left,
stretch in dim, mysterious, monotonous, and chilling silence beneath the crowded
streets of a busy capital—canopied by darkness, while all is light above—and
yawning like a vast sepulchre to receive the load of human life and human
treasure, which time must ultimately hurl in one huge ruin into its greedy
depths!
The Yere-Batan-Serai is, without any exception, the noblest remain of Roman
intellect and industry in Constantinople