the services,
attracted by the little troughs which the imams fill for their benefit
each morning with water from the Nile.

As for the mosque itself it is rarely closed on all sides as are
those in the countries of the more sombre Islam of the north. Here in
Egypt--since there is no real winter and scarcely ever any rain--one of
the sides of the mosque is left completely open to the garden; and the
sanctuary is separated from the verdure and the roses only by a simple
colonnade. Thus the faithful grouped beneath the palm-trees can pray
there equally as well as in the interior of the mosque, since they can
see, between the arches, the holy Mihrab.[*]

[*] The Mihrab is a kind of portico indicating the direction
of Mecca. It is placed at the end of each mosque, as the
altar is in our churches, and the faithful are supposed to
face it when they pray.

Oh! this sanctuary seen from the silent garden, this sanctuary in which
the pale gold gleams on the old ceiling of cedarwood, and mosaics of
mother-of-pearl shine on the walls as if they were embroideries of
silver that had been hung there.

There is no faience as in the mosques of Turkey or of Iran. Here it is
the triumph of patient mosaic. Mother-of-pearl of all colours, all kinds
of marble and of porphyry, cut into myriads of little pieces, precise
and equal, and put together again to form the Arab designs, which, never
borrowing from the human form, nor indeed from the form of any animal,
recall rather those infinitely varied crystals that may be seen under
the microscope in a flake of snow. It is always the Mihrab which is
decorated with the most elaborate richness; generally little columns of
lapis lazuli, intensely blue, rise in relief from it, framing mosaics so
delicate that they look like brocades of fine lace. In the old ceilings
of cedarwood, where the singing birds of the neighbourhood have their
nests, the golds mingle with some most exquisite colourings, which time
has taken care to soften and to blend together. And here and there very
fine and long consoles of sculptured wood seem to fall, as it were, from
the beams and hang upon the walls like stalactites; and these consoles,
too, in past times, have been carefully coloured and gilded. As for the
columns, always dissimilar, some of amaranth-coloured marble, others
of dark green, others again of red porphyry, with capitals of every
conceivable style, they are come from far, from the ni