These Mosques Will Continue To Remain Into The
Distant Future, Even When Men Shall Have Ceased To Pray In Them,
And
the winged guests shall have departed, for the want of those troughs
of water from the Nile, filled for
Them by the good imams, whose
hospitality they repay by making heard in the courts, beneath the
arched roofs, beneath the ceilings of cedarwood, the sweet, piping
music of birds.
CHAPTER IV
THE HALL OF THE MUMMIES
There are two of us, and as we light our way by the aid of a lantern
through these vast halls we might be taken for a night watch on its
round. We have just shut behind us and doubly locked the door by which
we entered, and we know that we are alone, rigorously alone, although
this place is so vast, with its endless, communicating halls, its high
vestibules and great flights of stairs; mathematically alone, one
might say, for this palace that we are in is one quite out of the
ordinary, and all its outlets were closed and sealed at nightfall.
Every night indeed the doors are sealed, on account of the priceless
relics that are collected here. So we shall not meet with any living
being in these halls to-night, in spite of their vast extent and
endless turnings, and in spite too of all these mysterious things that
are ranged on every side and fill the place with shadows and hiding-
places.
Our round takes us first along the ground floor over flagstones that
resound to our footsteps.
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