s _tables d'hote_. The ground here
is so felted with sand that in the distance we cannot hear the rolling
of their carriages. But the knowledge that they are gone renders more
intimate the interview with these numerous and identical goddesses,
who little by little have been draped in shadow. Their seats turn their
backs to the palaces of Thebes, which now begin to be bathed in
violet waves and seem to sink towards the horizon, to lose each minute
something of their importance before the sovereignty of the night.

And the black goddesses, with their lioness' heads and tall
headgear--seated there with their hands upon their knees, with eyes
fixed since the beginning of the ages, and a disturbing smile on their
thick lips, like those of a wild beast--continue to regard--beyond the
little dead lake--that desert, which now is only a confused immensity,
of a bluish ashy-grey. And the fancy seizes you that they are possessed
of a kind of life, which has come to them after long waiting, by virtue
of that _expression_ which they have worn on their faces so long, oh! so
long.

*****

Beyond, at the other extremity of the ruins, there is a sister of these
goddesses, taller than they, a great Sekhet, whom in these parts men
call the Ogress, and who dwells alone and upright, ambushed in a narrow
temple. Amongst the fellahs and the Bedouins of the neighbourhood she
enjoys a very bad reputation, it being her custom of nights to issue
from her temple, and devour men; and none of them would willingly
venture near her dwelling at this late hour. But instead of returning to
Luxor, like the good people whose carriages have just departed, I rather
choose to pay her a visit.

Her dwelling is some distance away, and I shall not reach it till the
dead of night.

First of all I have to retrace my steps, to return along the whole
avenue of rams, to pass again by the feet of the white giant, who has
already assumed his phantomlike appearance, while the violet waves that
bathed the town-mummy thicken and turn to a greyish-blue. And then,
leaving behind me the pylons guarded by the broken giants, I thread my
way among the palaces of the centre.

It is among these palaces that I encounter for good and all the night,
with the first cries of the owls and ospreys. It is still warm there, on
account of the heat stored by the stones during the day, but one feels
nevertheless that the air is freezing.

At a crossing a tall human figure looms up,