And as if they were charged to add to this babel a
note of beauty, the battalions of Mr. Cook, of both sexes, and always
in a hurry, pass by with long strides.
Beyond the shops, following the line of the quay, there are other
hotels. Less aggressive, all of them, than the Winter Palace, they
have had the discretion not to raise themselves too high, and to cover
their fronts with white chalk in the Arab fashion, even to conceal
themselves in clusters of palm-trees.
And finally there is the colossal temple of Luxor, looking as out of
place now as the poor obelisk which Egypt gave us as a present, and
which stands to-day in the Place de la Concorde.
Bordering the Nile, it is a colossal grove of stone, about three
hundred yards in length. In epochs of a magnificence that is now
scarcely conceivable this forest of columns grew high and thick,
rising impetuously at the bidding of Amenophis and the great Ramses.
And how beautiful it must have been even yesterday, dominating in its
superb disarray this surrounding country, vowed for centuries to
neglect and silence!
But to-day, with all these things that men have built around it, you
might say that it no longer exists.
We reach an iron-barred gate and, to enter, have to show our permit to
the guards. Once inside the immense sanctuary, perhaps we shall find
solitude again. But, alas, under the profaned columns a crowd of
people passes, with /Baedekers/ in their hands, the same people that
one sees here everywhere, the same world as frequents Nice and the
Riviera. And, to crown the mockery, the noise of the dynamos pursues
us even here, for the boats of Messrs. Cook are moored to the bank
close by.
Hundreds of columns, columns which are anterior by many centuries to
those of Greece, and represent, in their naïve enormity, the first
conceptions of the human brain. Some are fluted and give the
impression of sheaves of monstrous weeds; others, quite plain and
simple, imitate the stem of the papyrus, and bear by way of capital
its strange flower. The tourists, like the flies, enter at certain
times of the day, which it suffices to know. Soon the little bells of
the hotels will call them away and the hour of midday will find me
here alone. But what in heaven's name will deliver me from the noise
of the dynamos? But look! beyond there, at the bottom of the
sanctuaries, in the part which should be the holy of holies, that
great fresco, now half effaced, but still clearly visible on the wall
- how unexpected and arresting it is! An image of Christ!
