s and trampling them under foot;
immense pages of history carved with a chisel on colossal stone books
which the most distant posterity was yet to read. These buildings rose
much higher than the pylons. The cornices, curving outwards and topped
with great stones so arranged as to form battlements, showed superbly
against the crest of the Libyan Mountains, which formed the background
of the picture.

The facade of the palace connected these buildings and filled up the
whole of the intervening space. Above its giant gateway, flanked with
sphinxes, showed three rows of square windows, through which streamed
the light from the interior and which formed upon the dark wall a sort
of luminous checker-board. From the first story projected balconies,
supported by statues of crouching prisoners.

The officers of the king's household, the eunuchs, the servants, and the
slaves, informed of the approach of His Majesty by the blare of the
trumpets and the roll of the drums, had proceeded to meet him, and
waited, kneeling and prostrate, in the court paved with great stone
slabs. Captives, of the despised race of Scheto, bore urns filled with
salt and olive oil, in which was dipped a wick, the flame of which
crackled bright and clear. These men stood ranged in line from the
basalt gate to the entrance of the first court, motionless like bronze
lamp-bearers.

Soon the head of the procession entered the pylon and the bugles and the
drums sounded with a din which, repeated by the echoes, drove the
sleeping ibises from the entablatures. The bearers stopped at the gate
in the facade between the two pavilions; slaves brought a footstool with
several steps and placed it by the side of the litter. The Pharaoh rose
with majestic slowness and stood for a few moments perfectly motionless.
Thus standing on a pedestal of shoulders, he soared above all heads and
appeared to be twelve cubits high. Strangely lighted, half by the rising
moon, half by the light of the lamps, in a costume in which gold and
enamels sparkled intermittently, he resembled Osiris, or Typhon rather.
He descended the steps as if he were a statue, and at last entered the
palace.

A first inner court, framed in by a row of huge pillars covered with
hieroglyphs, that bore a frieze ending in volutes, was slowly crossed
by the Pharaoh in the midst of a crowd of prostrate slaves and maids.

Then appeared another court surrounded by a covered cloister, and short
columns, the cap