"Your permit, sir."
"Here it is."
(Here we combine our efforts to illuminate the said permit by the
light of a match.)
"Good, I will go with you."
"No. I beg of you."
"Yes; I had better. Where are you going?"
"Beyond, to the temple of that lady - you know, who is great and
powerful and has a face like a lioness."
"Ah! . . . Yes, I think I understand that you would prefer to go
alone." (Here the intonation becomes infantine.) "But you are a kind
gentleman and will not forget the poor Bedouin all the same."
He goes on his way. On leaving the palaces I have still to traverse an
extent of uncultivated country, where a veritable cold seizes me.
Above my head no longer the heavy suspended stones, but the far-off
expanse of the blue night sky - where are shining now myriads upon
myriads of stars. For the Thebans of old this beautiful vault,
scintillating always with its powder of diamonds, shed no doubt only
serenity upon their souls. But for us, /who knows, alas!/ it is on the
contrary the field of the great fear, which, out of pity, it would
have been better if we had never been able to see; the incommensurable
black void, where the worlds in their frenzied whirling precipitate
themselves like rain, crash into and annihilate one another, only to
be renewed for fresh eternities.
All this is seen too vividly, the horror of it becomes intolerable, on
a clear night like this, in a place so silent and littered so with
ruins. More and more the cold penetrates you - the mournful cold of the
sidereal spheres from which nothing now seems to protect you, so
rarefied - almost non-existent - does the limpid atmosphere appear. And
the gravel, the poor dried herbs, that crackle under foot, give the
illusion of the crunching noise we know at home on winter nights when
the frost is on the ground.
I approach at length the temple of the Ogress. These stones which now
appear, whitish in the night, this secret-looking dwelling near the
boundary wall of Thebes, proclaim the spot, and verily at such an hour
as this it has an evil aspect. Ptolemaic columns, little vestibules,
little courtyards where a dim blue light enables you to find your way.
Nothing moves; not even the flight of a night bird: an absolute
silence, magnified awfully by the presence of the desert which you
feel encompasses you beyond these walls. And beyond, at the bottom,
three chambers made of massive stone, each with its separate entrance.
I know that the first two are empty. It is in the third that the
Ogress dwells, unless, indeed, she has already set out upon her
nocturnal hunt for human flesh.
