and random discoveries!

But now they are being closed. We loitered too long around the colossi
of Memnon and the palaces of the plain. It is nearly noon, a noon
consuming and mournful, which falls perpendicularly upon the red
summits, and is burning to its deepest recesses the valley of stone.

At the door of Amenophis we have to cajole, beseech. By the help of a
gratuity the Bedouin Grand Master of Ceremonies allows himself to be
persuaded. We are to descend with him, but quickly, quickly, for the
electric light will soon be extinguished. It will be a short audience,
but at least it will be a private one. We shall be alone with the king.

In the darkness, where at first, after so much sunlight, the little
electric lamps seem to us scarcely more than glow-worms, we expected a
certain amount of chilliness as in the undergrounds of our climate. But
here there is only a more oppressive heat, stifling and withering, and
we long to return to the open air, which was burning indeed, but was at
least the air of life.

Hastily we descend: by steep staircases, by passages which slope so
rapidly that they hurry us along of themselves, like slides; and it
seems that we shall never ascend again, any more than the great mummy
who passed here so long ago on his way to his eternal chamber. All this
brings us, first of all, to a deep well--dug there to swallow up the
desecrators in their passage--and it is on one of the sides of this
oubliette, behind a casual stone carefully sealed, that the continuation
of these funeral galleries was discovered. Then, when we have passed
the well, by a narrow bridge that has been thrown across it, the stairs
begin again, and the steep passages that almost make you run; but
now, by a sharp bend, they have changed their direction. And still we
descend, descend. Heavens! how deep down this king dwells! And at each
step of our descent we feel more and more imprisoned under the sovereign
mass of stone, in the centre of all this compact and silent thickness.

*****

The little electric globes, placed apart like a garland, suffice now for
our eyes which have forgotten the sun. And we can distinguish around us
myriad figures inviting us to solemnity and silence. They are inscribed
everywhere on the smooth, spotless walls of the colour of old ivory.
They follow one another in regular order, repeating themselves
obstinately in parallel rows, as if the better to impose upon our
spirit, with gestures and