re
numberless, these eternally gesticulating gods. Wherever you look their
forms are multiplied with a stupefying repetition. They seem to have
some mysterious secret to convey to one another, but have perforce to
remain silent, and for all the expressiveness of their attitudes their
hands do not move. And hieroglyphs, too, repeated to infinity, envelop
you on all sides like a multiple woof of mystery.

*****

Minute by minute now, everything amongst these rigid dead things grows
more precise. Cold, hard rays penetrate through the immense ruin,
separating with a sharp incisiveness the light from the shadows.
The feeling that these stones, wearied as they were with their long
duration, might still be thoughtful, still mindful of their past, grows
less--less than it was a few moments before, far less than during the
preceding blue phantasmagoria. Under this clear, pale light, as in
the daytime, under the fire of the sun, Thebes has lost for the moment
whatever remained to it of soul; it has receded farther into the
backward of time, and appears now nothing more than a vast gigantic
fossil that excites only our wonder and our fear.

*****

But the tourists will soon be here, attracted by the moon. A league
away, in the hotels of Luxor, I can fancy how they have hurried away
from the tables, for fear of missing the celebrated spectacle. For me,
therefore, it is time to beat a retreat, and, by the great avenue again,
I direct my steps towards the pylons of the Ptolemies, where the night
guards are waiting.

They are busy already, these Bedouins, in opening the gates for some
tourists, who have shown their permits, and who carry Kodaks, magnesium
to light up the temples--quite an outfit in short.

Farther on, when I have taken the road to Luxor, it is not long before I
meet, under the palm-trees and on the sands, the crowd, the main body
of the arrivals--some in carriages, some on horseback, some on donkeys.
There is a noise of voices speaking all sorts of non-Egyptian languages.
One is tempted to ask: "What is happening? A ball, a holiday, a grand
marriage?" No. The moon is full to-night at Thebes, upon the ruins. That
is all.

CHAPTER XVI

THEBES IN SUNLIGHT

It is two o'clock in the afternoon. A white angry fire pours from the
sky, which is pale from excess of light. A sun inimical to the men of
our climate scorches the enormous fossil which, crumbling in places, is
all that remains of Thebes and which lie