The sun at this moment falls perpendicularly on their
heads and strange headgear, details their everlasting smile, and then
sheds itself on their shoulders and their naked torso, exaggerating
their athletic muscles. Each holding in his hand the symbolical cross,
the three giants rush forward with a formidable stride, heads raised,
smiling, in a radiant march into eternity.
Oh! this midday sun, that now pours down upon the white faces of these
giants, and displaces ever so slowly the shadows cast upon their
breasts by their chins and Osiridean beards. To think how often in the
midst of this same silence, this same ray has fallen thus, fallen from
the same changeless sky, to occupy itself in this same tranquil play!
Yes, I think that the fogs and rains of our winters, upon these
stupendous ruins, would be less sad and less terrible than the calm of
this eternal sunshine.
*****
Suddenly a ridiculous noise begins to make the air tremble; the
dynamos of the Agencies have been put in motion, and ladies in green
spectacles arrive, a charming throng, with guidebooks and cameras. The
tourists, in short, are come out of their hotels, at the same hour as
the flies awake. And the midday peace of Luxor has come to an end.
CHAPTER XIV
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY EVENING AT THEBES
An impalpable dust floats in a sky which scarcely ever knows a cloud;
a dust so impalpable that, even while it powders the heavens with
gold, it leaves them their infinite transparency.
