Indeed, Now That The Time Of Transition Between The Day And Night Has
Passed, The Eyes Grow Accustomed To The
Strange, blue, persistent
clearness so that you seem suddenly to have acquired the pupils of a
cat; and the ultimate
Effect is merely as if you saw through a smoked
glass which changed all the various shades of this reddish-coloured
country into one uniform tint of blue.
Behold me then, for some two or three hours, alone among the temples
of the Pharaohs. The tourists, whom the carriages and donkeys are at
this moment taking back to the hotels of Luxor, will not return till
very late, when the full moon will have risen and be shedding its
clear light upon the ruins. My post, while I waited, was high up among
the ruins on the margin of the sacred Lake of Osiris, the still and
enclosed water of which is astonishing in that it has remained there
for so many centuries. It still conceals, no doubt, numberless
treasures confided to it in the days of slaughters and pillages, when
the armies of the Persian and Nubian kings forced the thick,
surrounding walls.
In a few minutes, thousands of stars appear at the bottom of this
water, reflecting symmetrically the veritable ones which now
scintillate everywhere in the heavens. A sudden cold spreads over the
town-mummy, whose stones, still warm from their exposure to the sun,
cool very rapidly in this nocturnal blue which envelops them as in a
shroud.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 140 of 206
Words from 37716 to 37967
of 55391
