This good lady evidently belongs to that extensive category of hardy
explorers who, despite their high respectability at home, do not
hesitate, once they are landed on the banks of the Nile, to supplement
their treatment by the sun and the dry winds with a little of the
"Bedouin cure."
CHAPTER VIII
ARCHAIC CHRISTIANITY
Dimly lighted by the flames of a few poor slender tapers which flicker
against the walls in stone arches, a dense crowd of human figures
veiled in black, in a place overpowering and suffocating - underground,
no doubt - which is filled with the perfume of the incense of Arabia;
and a noise of almost wicked movement, which sirs us to alarm and even
horror: bleatings of new-born babies, cries of distress of tiny mites
whose voices are drowned, as if on purpose, by a clinking of cymbals.
What can it be? Why have they descended into this dark hole, these
little ones, who howl in the midst of the smoke, held by these
phantoms in mourning? Had we entered it unawares we might have thought
it a den of wicked sorcery, an underground cavern for the black mass.
But no. It is the crypt of the basilica of St. Sergius during the
Coptic mass of Easter morning. And when, after the first surprise, we
examine these phantoms, we find that, for the most part, they are
young mothers, with the refined and gentle faces of Madonnas, who hold
the plaintive little ones beneath their black veils and seek to
comfort them.
