And the dust
condescends to mark their exodus also by a last cloud of gold beneath
the palm-trees of the road.
An immediate solemnity succeeds to their departure. Above the mud
houses of the fellah villages rise slender columns of smoke, which are
of a periwinkle-blue in the midst of the still yellow atmosphere. They
tell of the humble life of these little homesteads, subsisting here,
where in the backward of the ages were so many palaces and splendours.
And the first bayings of the watchdogs announce already the vague
uneasiness of the evenings around the ruins. There is no one now
within the mummy-town, which seems all at once to have grown larger in
the silence. Very quickly the violet shadow covers it, all save the
extreme points of its obelisks, which keep still a little of their
rose-colour. The feeling comes over you that a sovereign mystery has
taken possession of the town, as if some vague phantom things had just
passed into it.
CHAPTER XV
THEBES BY NIGHT
The feeling, almost, that you have grown suddenly smaller by entering
there, that you are dwarfed to less than human size - to such an extent
do the proportions of these ruins seem to crush you - and the illusion,
also, that the light, instead of being extinguished with the evening,
has only changed its colour, and become blue: that is what one
experiences on a clear Egyptian night, in walking between the
colonnades of the great temple at Thebes.
The place is, moreover, so singular and so terrible that its mere name
would at once cast a spell upon the spirit, even if one were ignorant
of the place itself. The hypostyle of the temple of the God Amen - that
could be no other thing but one. For this hall is unique in the world,
in the same way as the Grotto of Fingal and the Himalayas are unique.
*****
To wander absolutely alone at night in Thebes requires during the
winter a certain amount of stratagem and a knowledge of the routine of
the tourists. It is necessary, first of all, to choose a night on
which the moon rises late and then, having entered before the close of
the day, to escape the notice of the Bedouin guards who shut the gates
at nightfall. Thus have I waited with the patience of a stone Osiris,
till the grand transformation scene of the setting of the sun was
played out once more upon the ruins. Thebes, which, during the day, is
almost animate by reason of the presence of the visitors and the gangs
of fellahs who, singing the while, are busy at the diggings and the
clearing away of the rubbish, has emptied itself little by little,
while the blue shadows were mounting from the base of the monstrous
sanctuaries.
