to build their nests in them.

It will be the glory of the present reign that it has preserved, before
it was too late, all this magnificent legacy of Moslem art. When the
city of "The Arabian Nights," which was formerly there, shall have
entirely disappeared, to give place to a vulgar _entrepot_ of commerce
and of pleasure, to which the plutocracy of the whole world comes every
winter to disport itself, so much at least will remain to bear testimony
to the lofty and magnificent thought that inspired the earlier Arab
life. These mosques will continue to remain into the distant future,
even when men shall have ceased to pray in them, and the winged guests
shall have departed, for the want of those troughs of water from the
Nile, filled for them by the good imams, whose hospitality they repay
by making heard in the courts, beneath the arched roofs, beneath the
ceilings of cedarwood, the sweet, piping music of birds.



CHAPTER IV

THE HALL OF THE MUMMIES

There are two of us, and as we light our way by the aid of a lantern
through these vast halls we might be taken for a night watch on its
round. We have just shut behind us and doubly locked the door by which
we entered, and we know that we are alone, rigorously alone, although
this place is so vast, with its endless, communicating halls, its high
vestibules and great flights of stairs; mathematically alone, one might
say, for this palace that we are in is one quite out of the ordinary,
and all its outlets were closed and sealed at nightfall. Every night