Their Little Motionless Groups, Posted As If On The Watch, Seem So Little Real In Their Vague Whiteness That We Feel Tempted To Verify Them By Touching, And, Verily, We Should Not Be Astonished If Our Hand Passed Through Them As Through A Ghost.

Farther on there is a wide expanse without any houses at all, where these ubiquitous little obelisks abound in the sand like ears of corn in a field.

There is now no further room for illusion. We are in a cemetery, and have been passing in the midst of houses of the dead, and mosques of the dead, in a town of the dead.

Once emerged from this cemetery, which in the end at least disclosed itself in its true character, we are involved again in the continuation of the mysterious town, which takes us back into its network. Little houses follow one another as before, only now the little gardens are replaced by little burial enclosures. And everything grows more and more indistinct, in the gentle light, which gradually grows less. It is as if someone were putting frosted globes over the moon, so that soon, but for the transparency of this air of Egypt and the prevailing whiteness of things, there would be no light at all. Once at a window the light of a lamp appears; it is the lantern of gravediggers. Anon we hear the voices of men chanting a prayer; and the prayer is a prayer for the dead.

These tenantless houses were never built for dwellings.

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