. . . It Is Said That The
Sphinx Was Once Of Striking Beauty, When Harmonious Contour And
Colouring Animated The Face, And It Was Enthroned At Its Full Height
On A Kind Of Esplanade Paved With Long Slabs Of Stone.
But was it then
more sovereign than it is to-night in its last decrepitude?
Almost
buried beneath the sand of the Libyan desert, which now quite hides
its base, it rises at this hour like a phantom which nothing solid
sustains in the air.
*****
It has gone midnight. In little groups the tourists of the evening
have disappeared; to regain perhaps the neighbouring hotel, where the
orchestra doubtless has not ceased to rage; or may be, remounting
their cars, to join, in some club of Cairo, one of those bridge
parties, in which the really superior intellects of our time delight;
some - the stouthearted ones - departed talking loudly and with cigar in
mouth; others, however, daunted in spite of themselves, lowered their
voices as people instinctively do in church. And the Bedouin guides,
who a moment ago seemed to flutter about the giant monument like so
many black moths - they too have gone, made restless by the cold air,
which erstwhile they had not known. The show for to-night is over, and
everywhere silence reigns.
The rosy tint fades on the Sphinx and the pyramids; all things in the
ghostly scene grow visibly paler; for the moon as it rises becomes
more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter
mist, exhaled from the artificially watered fields below, continues to
rise, takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 8 of 206
Words from 1898 to 2168
of 55391
