But
everything that rises into the sky - the friezes of the temples, the
capitals of the columns, the sharp points of the obelisks - are still
red as glowing embers. These all become imbued with light and continue
to glow and shed a rosy illumination until the end of the twilight.
It is a glorious hour, even for the old dust of Egypt, which fills the
air eternally, without detracting at all from its wonderful clearness.
It savours of spices, of the Bedouin, of the bitumen of the
sarcophagus. And here now it is playing the role of those powders of
different shades of gold which the Japanese use for the backgrounds of
their lacquered landscapes. It reveals itself everywhere, close to and
on the horizon, modifying at its pleasure the colour of things, and
giving them a kind of metallic lustre. The phantasy of its changes is
unimaginable. Even in the distances of the countryside, it is busy
indicating by little trailing clouds of gold the smallest pathways
traversed by the herds.
And now the disc of the God of Thebes has disappeared behind the
Libyan mountains, after changing its light from red to yellow and from
yellow to green.
And thereupon the tourists, judging that the display is over for the
night, commence to descend and make ready for departure. Some in
carriages, others on donkeys, they go to recruit themselves with the
electricity and elegance of Luxor, the neighbouring town (wines and
spirits are paid for as extras, and we dress for dinner). And the dust
condescends to mark their exodus also by a last cloud of gold beneath
the palm-trees of the road.
An immediate solemnity succeeds to their departure. Above the mud
houses of the fellah villages rise slender columns of smoke, which are
of a periwinkle-blue in the midst of the still yellow atmosphere. They
tell of the humble life of these little homesteads, subsisting here,
where in the backward of the ages were so many palaces and splendours.
And the first bayings of the watchdogs announce already the vague
uneasiness of the evenings around the ruins. There is no one now
within the mummy-town, which seems all at once to have grown larger in
the silence. Very quickly the violet shadow covers it, all save the
extreme points of its obelisks, which keep still a little of their
rose-colour. The feeling comes over you that a sovereign mystery has
taken possession of the town, as if some vague phantom things had just
passed into it.
CHAPTER XV
THEBES BY NIGHT
The feeling, almost, that you have grown suddenly smaller by entering
there, that you are dwarfed to less than human size - to such an extent
do the proportions of these ruins seem to crush you - and the illusion,
also, that the light, instead of being extinguished with the evening,
has only changed its colour, and become blue: that is what one
experiences on a clear Egyptian night, in walking between the
colonnades of the great temple at Thebes.
The place is, moreover, so singular and so terrible that its mere name
would at once cast a spell upon the spirit, even if one were ignorant
of the place itself. The hypostyle of the temple of the God Amen - that
could be no other thing but one. For this hall is unique in the world,
in the same way as the Grotto of Fingal and the Himalayas are unique.
*****
To wander absolutely alone at night in Thebes requires during the
winter a certain amount of stratagem and a knowledge of the routine of
the tourists. It is necessary, first of all, to choose a night on
which the moon rises late and then, having entered before the close of
the day, to escape the notice of the Bedouin guards who shut the gates
at nightfall. Thus have I waited with the patience of a stone Osiris,
till the grand transformation scene of the setting of the sun was
played out once more upon the ruins. 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.
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.
