f the desert which you feel
encompasses you beyond these walls. And beyond, at the bottom, three
chambers made of massive stone, each with its separate entrance. I know
that the first two are empty. It is in the third that the Ogress dwells,
unless, indeed, she has already set out upon her nocturnal hunt for
human flesh. Pitch darkness reigns within and I have to grope my way.
Quickly I light a match. Yes, there she is indeed, alone and upright,
almost part of the end wall, on which my little light makes the horrible
shadow of her head dance. The match goes out--irreverently I light many
more under her chin, under that heavy, man-eating jaw. In very sooth,
she is terrifying. Of black granite--like her sisters, seated on the
margin of the mournful lake--but much taller than they, from six to
eight feet in height, she has a woman's body, exquisitely slim and
young, with the breasts of a virgin. Very chaste in attitude, she
holds in her hand a long-stemmed lotus flower, but by a contrast
that nonplusses and paralyses you the delicate shoulders support the
monstrosity of a huge lioness' head. The lappets of her bonnet fall on
either side of her ears almost down to her breast, and surmounting the
bonnet, by way of addition to the mysterious pomp, is a large moon disc.
Her dead stare gives to the ferocity of her visage something unreasoning
and fatal; an irresponsible ogress, without pity as without pleasure,
devouring after the manner of Nature and of Time. And it was so
perhaps that she was understood by the initiated of ancient Egypt, who
symbolised everything for the people in the figures of gods.

In the dark retreat, enclosed with defaced stones, in the little temple
where she stands, alone, upright and grand, with her enormous head and
thrust-out chin and tall goddess' headdress--one is necessarily quite
close to her. In touching her, at night, you are astonished to find that
she is less cold than the air; she becomes somebody, and the intolerable
dead stare seems to weigh you down.

During the _tete-a-tete_, one thinks involuntarily of the surroundings,
of these ruins in the desert, of the prevailing nothingness, of the cold
beneath the stars. And, now, that summation of doubt and despair
and terror, which such an assemblage of things inspires in you, is
confirmed, if one may say so, by the meeting with this divinity-symbol,
which awaits you at the end of the journey, to receive ironically all
human prayer; a rigid h