Dead Towers, by: George Roudenbach

How sad the towers also seem at the end of the afternoon! I love them just as they are, and because of his deep sadness, he chose them to live in after his great calamity. Long ago, during happy times, when he traveled with his wife and lived within his imagination a somewhat worldly existence in Paris, in a foreign country, on the seaside, he came here with her without the gloom that hangs here affecting their happiness. But later, when he became alone, he remembered the towers and was immediately struck by the feeling that he needed to settle there from that time onward. An obscure equation was set up, so that the deceased wife would have to agree with a dead city, and demand such great mourning, so that life would be possible for him only in this place. He came here instinctively, leaving the world somewhere else in turmoil, bustling, celebrating its holidays, and weaving thousands of rumors. He needed absolute silence and monotonous presence, to the extent that it barely made him feel that he was alive.