The Crops Are Like Ours At
Home - Wheat, Lucerne, And The Flowering Bean That Perfumes The Air
With Its White Blossoms.
But there is an excess of light in the sky
and, in the distance, an extraordinary clearness.
And then these
fertile plains, that might be those of some "Promised Land," seem to
be bounded far away, on left and right, by two parallel stone walls,
two chains of rose-coloured mountains, whose aspect is obviously
desertlike. Besides, amongst the numerous animals that are familiar,
there are camels, feeding their strange nurslings that look like four-
legged ostriches. And finally some peasants appear beyond in the
cornfields; they are veiled in long black draperies. It is the East
then, an African land, or some oasis of Arabia?
The sun at this moment is hidden from us by a band of clouds, that
stretches, right above our head, from one end of the sky to the other,
like a long skein of white wool. It is alone in the blue void, and
seems to make more peaceful, and even a little mysterious, the
wonderful light of the fields we traverse - these fields intoxicated
with life and vibrant with the music of birds; while, by contrast, the
distant landscape, unshaded by clouds, is resplendent with a more
incisive clearness and the desert beyond seems deluged with rays.
The pathway that we have been following, ill defined as it is in the
grassy fields, leads us at length under a large ruinous portico - a
relic of goodness knows what olden days - which still rises here, quite
isolated, altogether strange and unexpected, in the midst of the green
expanse of pasture and tillage. We had seen it from a great distance,
so pure and clear is the air; and in approaching it we perceive that
it is colossal, and in relief on its lintel is designed a globe with
two long wings outspread symmetrically.
It behoves us now to make obeisance with almost religious reverence,
for this winged disc is a symbol which gives at length an indication
of the place immediate and absolute. It is Egypt, the country - Egypt,
our ancient mother. And there before us must once have stood a temple
reverenced of the people, or some great vanished town; its fragments
of columns and sculptured capitals are strewn about in the fields of
lucerne. How inexplicable it seems that this land of ancient
splendours, which never ceased indeed to be nutritive and prodigiously
fertile, should have returned, for some hundreds of years now, to the
humble pastoral life of the peasants.
Through the green crops and the assembled herds our pathway seems to
lead to a kind of hill rising alone in the midst of the plains - a hill
which is neither of the same colour nor the same nature as the
mountains of the surrounding deserts. Behind us the portico recedes
little by little in the distance; its tall imposing silhouette, as
mournful and solitary, throws an infinite sadness on this sea of
meadows, which spread their peace where once was a centre of
magnificence.
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