draped in black and armed
with a baton. It is a roving Bedouin, one of the guards, and this more
or less is the dialogue exchanged between us (freely and succinctly
translated):

"Your permit, sir."

"Here it is."

(Here we combine our efforts to illuminate the said permit by the light
of a match.)

"Good, I will go with you."

"No. I beg of you."

"Yes; I had better. Where are you going?"

"Beyond, to the temple of that lady--you know, who is great and powerful
and has a face like a lioness."

"Ah! . . . Yes, I think I understand that you would prefer to go alone."
(Here the intonation becomes infantine.) "But you are a kind gentleman
and will not forget the poor Bedouin all the same."

He goes on his way. On leaving the palaces I have still to traverse an
extent of uncultivated country, where a veritable cold seizes me. Above
my head no longer the heavy suspended stones, but the far-off expanse of
the blue night sky--where are shining now myriads upon myriads of stars.
For the Thebans of old this beautiful vault, scintillating always with
its powder of diamonds, shed no doubt only serenity upon their souls.
But for us, _who knows, alas!_ it is on the contrary the field of the
great fear, which, out of pity, it would have been better if we had
never been able to see; the incommensurable black void, where the worlds
in their frenzied whirling precipitate themselves like rain, crash into
and annihilate one another, only to be renewed for fresh eternities.

All this is seen too vividly, the horror of it becomes intolerable, on a
clear night like this, in a place so silent and littered so with ruins.
More and more the cold penetrates you--the mournful cold of the sidereal
spheres from which nothing now seems to protect you, so rarefied--almost
non-existent--does the limpid atmosphere appear. And the gravel, the
poor dried herbs, that crackle under foot, give the illusion of the
crunching noise we know at home on winter nights when the frost is on
the ground.

I approach at length the temple of the Ogress. These stones which now
appear, whitish in the night, this secret-looking dwelling near the
boundary wall of Thebes, proclaim the spot, and verily at such an hour
as this it has an evil aspect. Ptolemaic columns, little vestibules,
little courtyards where a dim blue light enables you to find your way.
Nothing moves; not even the flight of a night bird: an absolute
silence, magnified awfully by the presence o