The Breaths
Of Air That Reach Us Between These Rocks Are Become Suddenly Burning,
And The Site Seems To Belong No Longer To Earth But To Some Calcined
Planet Which Had For Ever Lost Its Clouds And Atmosphere.
This Libyan
chain, in the distance so delicately rose, is positively frightful now
that it overhangs us.
It looks what it is - an enormous and fantastic
tomb, a natural necropolis, whose vastness and horror nothing human
could equal, an ideal stove for corpses that wanted to endure for
ever. The limestone, on which for that matter no rain ever falls from
the changeless sky, looks to be in one single piece from summit to
base, and betrays no crack or crevice by which anything might
penetrate into the sepulchres within. The dead could sleep, therefore,
in the heart of these monstrous blocks as sheltered as under vaults of
lead. And of what there is of magnificence the centuries have taken
care. The continual passage of winds laden with dust has scaled and
worn away the face of the rocks, so as to leave only the denser veins
of stone, and thus have reappeared strange architectural fantasies
such as Matter, in the beginning, might have dimly conceived.
Subsequently the sun of Egypt has lavished on the whole its ardent
reddish patines. And now the mountains imitate in places great organ-
pipes, badigeoned with yellow and carmine, and elsewhere huge
bloodstained skeletons and masses of dead flesh.
Outlined upon the excessive blue of the sky, the summits, illumined to
the point of dazzling, rise up in the light - like red cinders of a
glowing fire, splendours of living coal, against the pure indigo that
turns almost to darkness.
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