Egypt (La Mort de Philae)

which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely is no longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in other lands. A

d too, a nameless, elusive rose; emerges, and stares with fixed eyes and smiles. It is so huge it seems unreal, as if it were a reflection cast by some mirror hidden in the moon. . . . And behind this monster face, far away in the rear, on the top of those undefined and gently undulating sandhills, three apocalyptic signs rise up against the sky, those

he human likeness magnified beyond all measurement, and the three geometric mountains; things at first sight like exhalations, visionary things, with nevertheless here and th

r of rose, whence comes it, seeing that usually the moon tints with blue the things it illumines? One would not expect this colour either, which, nevertheless, is that of all the sands and all the granites of Egypt and Arabia. And then too, the eyes of the statue, how often have w

nvaders of this country, by changing the course of the old Nile, so as to water the earth and make it more productive, have brought hither the humidity of their own misty isle. And this strange cold, this

ost transparent gauze; and, like everything else here to-night, this gauze, too, is rose-colored. And meanwhile the Sphinx, which has seen the unrolling of all the h

a harsh, aspirate tongue, and then go off at a run, noiselessly, barefooted, with burnous flying, like moths in the night. They lie in wait for the parties of tourists who arrive from time to time. For the great symbols, during the hundreds and thousands of years that have elapsed since men ceased to venerate them, have nevertheless scarcely ever been alone, especially on nights with a full

r the idlers and upstarts of the whole world. The modern spirit encompasses the old desert of the Sphinx on every side. It is true that up to the present no one has dared to profane it by building in the immediate neighbourhood of the great statue. Its fixity and calm disdain still hold some sway, perhaps. But little more than a mile away there ends a road travelled by hackney carriages and tramway cars, a

a dip of the ground all this had disappeared, what a sense of deliverance possessed us, how far off this turmoil seemed! As soon as we commenced to tread upon the sand of centuries, where all at once our footsteps made no sound, nothing seeme

n diminishing perspective, until at last high up they form the apex of this giddy triangle. And the pyramid seemed to be illumined by some sad dawn of the end of the world, a dawn which made ruddy only the sands and the granites of earth, and left the heavens, pricked with their myriad stars, more a

escend the slope of that sandhill which looked like a cloud, and seemed as if covered with felt, in order to preserve in such a place a more complete silence. And here and

appets of its headgear showed like downhanging ears. And then gradually, as we walked on, we saw it in profile, shorn of its nose-flat-nosed like a death's head-but having already an expression even when seen afar off and from the side; already disdainful with thrust-out chin and baffling, mysterious smile. A

conoclasts; so dilapidated, broken and diminished, that it is as inexpressive as the crumbling mummies found in the sarcophagi, which

ing meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to sum up in the smile of these closed lips the vanity of the most profound of our human speculations. . . . It is said that the Sphinx was once of striking beauty, when harmonious contour and colouring anim

bridge parties, in which the really superior intellects of our time delight; some-the stouthearted ones-departed talking loudly and with cigar in mouth; others, however, daunted in spite of themselves, lowered their voices as people instinctively do in churc

es to rise, takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself. And the latter persists in its regard of the dead moon, preserving still the old disconcerting smile. It becomes more and more difficult to believe that here before us is a real colossus, so surely does

r so many centuries, but to have withheld in melancholy irony, is this: that all these dead men and women who sleep in the vast necropolis below have been fooled, and the awakening signal has not sou