Thebes, Which, During The Day, Is
Almost Animate By Reason Of The Presence Of The Visitors And The Gangs
Of
Fellahs who, singing the while, are busy at the diggings and the
clearing away of the rubbish, has emptied itself
Little by little,
while the blue shadows were mounting from the base of the monstrous
sanctuaries. I watched the people moving in a long row, like a trail
of ants, towards the western gate between the pylons of the Ptolemies,
and the last of them had disappeared before the rosy light died away
on the topmost points of the obelisks.
It seemed as if the silence and the night arrived together from beyond
the Arabian desert, advanced together across the plain, spreading out
like a rapid oil-stain; then gained the town from east to west, and
rose rapidly from the ground to the very summits of the temples. And
this march of the darkness was infinitely solemn.
For the first few moments, indeed, you might imagine that it was going
to be an ordinary night such as we know in our climate, and a sense of
uneasiness takes hold of you in the midst of this confusion of
enormous stones, which in the darkness would become a quite
inextricable maze. Oh! the horror of being lost in those ruins of
Thebes and not being able to see! But in the event the air preserved
its transparency to such a degree, and the stars began soon to
scintillate so brightly that the surrounding things could be
distinguished almost as well as in the daytime.
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