like, and fancy yourself far away from any place inhabited by living
beings. The great town, which we know to be so close, appears from
time to time, thanks to the undulations of the ground, as a mere
phosphorescence, a reflection of its myriad electric lights. We are
indeed in the desert of the dead, in the sole company of the moon,
which, by the fantasy of this wonderful Egyptian sky, is to-night a moon
of grey pearl, one might almost say a moon of mother-of-pearl.

Each of these funeral mosques is a thing of splendour, if one examines
it closely in its solitude. These strange upraised domes, which from
a distance look like the head-dresses of dervishes or magi, are
embroidered with arabesques, and the walls are crowned with denticulated
trefoils of exquisite fashioning.

But nobody venerates these tombs of the Mameluke oppressors, or keeps
them in repair; and within them there are no more chants, no prayers
to Allah. Night after night they pass in an infinity of silence. Piety
contents itself with not destroying them; leaving them there at the
mercy of time and the sun and the wind which withers and crumbles
them. And all around are the signs of ruin. Tottering cupolas show us
irreparable cracks; the halves of broken arches are outlined to-night
in shadow against the mother-of-pearl light of the sky, and debris of
sculptured stones are strewn about. But nevertheless these tombs,
that are well-nigh accursed, still stir in us a vague sense of
alarm--particularly those in the distance, which rise up like
silhouettes of misshapen giants in enormous hats--dark on the white
sheet of sand--and stand there in groups, or scattered in confusion, at
the entrance to the vast empty regions beyond.

*****