total darkness and they too are silent and white, with a slight bluish
tint cast on them by the moon. And sometimes, between the houses, there
are little enclosed spaces, like narrow gardens, but which can have no
possible verdure. And in these gardens numbers of little obelisks rise
from the sand--white obelisks, it is needless to say, for to-night
we are in the kingdom of absolute whiteness. What can they be, these
strange little gardens? . . . And the sand, meanwhile, which covers the
streets with its thick coatings, continues to deaden the sound of our
progress, out of compliment no doubt to all these watchful things that
are so silent around us.

At the crossings and in the little squares the obelisks become more
numerous, erected always at either end of a slab of stone that is about
the length of a man. Their little motionless groups, posted as if on the
watch, seem so little real in their vague whiteness that we feel tempted
to verify them by touching, and, verily, we should not be astonished if
our hand passed through them as through a ghost. Farther on there is a
wide expanse without any houses at all, where these ubiquitous little
obelisks abound in the sand like ears of corn in a field. There is
now no further room for illusion. We are in a cemetery, and have been
passing in the midst of houses of the dead, and mosques of the dead, in
a town of the dead.

Once emerged from this cemetery, which in the end at least disclosed
itself in its true character, we are involved again in the continuation
of the mysterious town, which takes us back into its network. Little
houses follow one another as before, only now the little gardens are
replaced by little burial enclosures. And everything grows more and more
indistinct, in the gentle light, which gradually grows less. It is as if
someone were putting frosted globes over the moon, so that soon, but for