to a famous basilica! Were it not for
these groups of Copts, dressed in their Sunday garb, who make their way
like us through the ruins to the Easter mass, we should think that we
had lost our way.

And how pretty they look, these women draped like phantoms in their
black silks. Their long veils do not completely hide them, as do
those of the Moslems. They are simply placed over their hair and leave
uncovered the delicate features, the golden necklet and the half-bared
arms that carry on their wrists thick twisted bracelets of virgin
gold. Pure Egyptians as they are, they have preserved the same delicate
profile, the same elongated eyes, as mark the old goddesses carved in
bas-relief on the Pharaonic walls. But some, alas, amongst the young
ones have discarded their traditional costume, and are arrayed _a la
franque_, in gowns and hats. And such gowns, such hats, such flowers!
The very peasants of our meanest villages would disdain them. Oh! why
cannot someone tell these poor little women, who have it in their power
to be so adorable, that the beautiful folds of their black veils give
to them an exquisite and characteristic distinction, while this poor
tinsel, which recalls the mid-Lent carnivals, makes of them objects that
excite our pity!

In one of the walls which now surround us there is a low and shrinking
doorway. Can this be the entrance to the basilica? The idea seems
absurd. And yet some of the pretty creatures in the black veils and
bracelets of gold, who were in front of us, have disappeared through it,
and already the perfume of the censers is wafted towards us. A kind of
corridor, astonishingly poor and old, twists itself suspiciously, and
then issues into a narrow court, more than a thousand years old, where
offertory boxes, fixed on Oriental brackets, invite our alms. The odour
of the incense becomes more pronounced, and at last a door, hidden in
shadow at the end of this retreat, gives access to the venerable church
itself.

The church! It is a mixture of Byzantine basilica, mosque and desert
hut. Entering there, it is as if we were introduced suddenly to the
naive infancy of Christianity, as if we surprised it, as it were, in
its cradle--which was indeed Oriental. The triple nave is full of little
children (here also, that is what strikes us first), of little mites
who cry or else laugh and play; and there are mothers suckling their
new-born babes--and all the time the invisible mass is being celebra