You Are Too Near Them, They Seem Too Much The Masters Of The Exits, These Gods With Their Heads Of Falcon, Ibis And Jackal, Who, On The Walls, Converse In A Continual Exalted Pantomime.

And then the feeling comes over you, that you are guilty of sacrilege standing there, before this open coffin, in this unwonted insolent light.

The dolorous, blackish face, half eaten away, seems to ask for mercy: "Yes, yes, my sepulchre has been violated and I am returning to dust. But now that you have seen me, leave me, turn out that light, have pity on my nothingness."

In sooth, what a mockery! To have taken so many pains, to have adopted so many stratagems to hide his corpse; to have exhausted thousands of men in the hewing of this underground labyrinth, and to end thus, with his head in the glare of an electric lamp, to amuse whoever passes.

And out of pity - I think it was the poor bouquet of mimosa that awakened it - I say to the Bedouin: "Yes, put out the light, put it out - that is enough."

And then the darkness returns above the royal countenance, which is suddenly effaced in the sarcophagus. The phantom of the Pharaoh is vanished, as if replunged into the unfathomable past. The audience is over.

And we, who are able to escape from the horror of the hypogeum, reascend rapidly towards the sunshine of the living, we go to breathe the air again, the air to which we have still a right - for some few days longer.

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