ger a base; its columns
rise separately from this kind of suspended lake. It looks as if it had
been constructed in the water for the purpose of some royal naumachy. We
enter with our boat--a strange port indeed, in its ancient grandeur; a
port of a nameless melancholy, particularly at this yellow hour of the
closing twilight, and under these icy winds that come to us mercilessly
from the neighbouring deserts. And yet how adorable it is, this kiosk of
Philae, in this the abandonment that precedes its downfall! Its columns
placed, as it were, upon something unstable, become thereby more
slender, seem to raise higher still the stone foliage of their capitals.
A veritable kiosk of dreamland now, which one feels is about to
disappear for ever under these waters which will subside no more!

And now, for another few moments, it grows quite light again, and tints
of a warmer copper reappear in the sky. Often in Egypt when the sun has
set and you think the light is gone, this furtive recoloration of the
air comes thus to surprise you, before the darkness finally descends.
The reddish tints seem to return to the slender shafts that surround us,
and also, beyond, to the temple of the goddess, standing there like a
sheer rock in the middle of this little sea, which the wind covers with
foam.

On leaving the kiosk our boat--on this deep usurping water, among the
submerged palm-trees--makes a detour in order to lead us to the temple
by the road which the pilgrims of olden times used to travel on foot--by
that way which, a little while ago, was still magnificent, bordered with
colonnades and statues. But now the road is entirely submerged, and will
never be seen again. Between its double row of columns the water lifts
us to the height of the capitals, which alone emerge and which we could
touch with our hands. It seems like some journey of the end of time, in
a kind of deserted Venice, which is about to topple over, to sink and be
forgotten.

We arrive at the temple. Above our heads rise the enormous pylons,
ornamented with figures in bas-relief: an Isis who stretches out her
arms as if she were making signs to us, and numerous other divinities
gesticulating mysteriously. The door which opens in the thickness of
these walls is low, besides being half flooded, and gives on to depths
already in darkness. We row on and enter the sanctuary, and as soon as
one boat has crossed the sacred threshold the boatmen stop their song
and sudden