The rosy tint fades on the Sphinx and the pyramids; all things in the
ghostly scene grow visibly paler; for the moon as it rises becomes
more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter
mist, exhaled from the artificially watered fields below, continues to
rise, takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself. And the
latter persists in its regard of the dead moon, preserving still the
old disconcerting smile. It becomes more and more difficult to believe
that here before us is a real colossus, so surely does it seem nothing
other than a dilated reflection of a thing which exists /elsewhere/,
in some other world. And behind in the distance are the three
triangular mountains. Them, too, the fog envelops, till they also
cease to exist, and become pure visions of the Apocalypse.
Now it is that little by little an intolerable sadness is expressed in
those large eyes with their empty sockets - for, at this moment, the
ultimate secret, that which the Sphinx seems to have known for so many
centuries, but to have withheld in melancholy irony, is this: that all
these dead men and women who sleep in the vast necropolis below have
been fooled, and the awakening signal has not sounded for a single one
of them; and that the creation of mankind - mankind that thinks and
suffers - has had no rational explanation, and that our poor
aspirations are vain, but so vain as to awaken pity.
CHAPTER II
THE PASSING OF CAIRO
Ragged, threatening clouds, like those that bring the showers of our
early spring, hurry across a pale evening sky, whose mere aspect makes
you cold. A wintry wind, raw and bitter, blows without ceasing, and
brings with it every now and then some furtive spots of rain.
A carriage takes me towards what was once the residence of the great
Mehemet Ali: by a steep incline it ascends into the midst of rocks and
sand - and already, and almost in a moment, we seem to be in the
desert; though we have scarcely left behind the last houses of an Arab
quarter, where long-robed folk, who looked half frozen, were muffled
up to the eyes to-day. . . . Was there formerly such weather as this
in this country noted for its unchanging mildness?
This residence of the great sovereign of Egypt, the citadel and the
mosque which he had made for his last repose, are perched like eagles'
nests on a spur of the mountain chain of Arabia, the Mokattam, which
stretches out like a promontory towards the basin of the Nile, and
brings quite close to Cairo, so as almost to overhang it, a little of
the desert solitude. And so the eye can see from far off and from all
sides the mosque of Mehemet Ali, with the flattened domes of its
cupolas, its pointed minarets, the general aspect so entirely Turkish,
perched high up, with a certain unexpectedness, above the Arab town
which it dominates. The prince who sleeps there wished that it should
resemble the mosques of his fatherland, and it looks as if it had been
transported bodily from Stamboul.
A short trot brings us up to the lower gate of the old fortress; and,
by a natural effect, as we ascend, all Cairo which is near there,
seems to rise with us: not yet indeed the endless multitude of its
houses; but at first only the thousands of its minarets, which in a
few seconds point their high towers into the mournful sky, and suggest
at once that an immense town is about to unfold itself under our eyes.
Continuing to ascend - past the double rampart, the double or triple
gates, which all these old fortresses possess, we penetrate at length
into a large fortified courtyard, the crenellated walls of which shut
out our further view. Soldiers are on guard there - and how unexpected
are such soldiers in this holy place of Egypt! The red uniforms and
the white faces of the north: Englishmen, billeted in the palace of
Mehemet Ali!
The mosque first meets the eye, preceding the palace. And as we
approach, it is Stamboul indeed - for me dear old Stamboul - which is
called to mind; there is nothing, whether in the lines of its
architecture or in the details of its ornamentation, to suggest the
art of the Arabs - a purer art it may be than this and of which many
excellent examples may be seen in Cairo. No; it is a corner of Turkey
into which we are suddenly come.
Beyond a courtyard paved with marble, silent and enclosed, which
serves as a vast parvis, the sanctuary recalls those of Mehemet Fatih
or the Chah Zade: the same sanctified gloom, into which the stained
glass of the narrow windows casts a splendour as of precious stones;
the same extreme distance between the enormous pillars, leaving more
clear space than in our churches, and giving to the domes the
appearance of being held up by enchantment.
The walls are of a strange white marble streaked with yellow. The
ground is completely covered with carpets of a sombre red. In the
vaults, very elaborately wrought, nothing but blacks and gold: a
background of black bestrewn with golden roses, and bordered with
arabesques like gold lace. And from above hang thousands of gold
chains supporting the vigil lamps for the evening prayers. Here and
there are people on their knees, little groups in robe and turban,
scattered fortuitously upon the red of the carpets, and almost lost in
the midst of the sumptuous solitude.
In an obscure corner lies Mehemet Ali, the prince adventurous and
chivalrous as some legendary hero, and withal one of the greatest
sovereigns of modern history.
