corridor, astonishingly poor and old, twists itself suspiciously, and
then issues into a narrow court, more than a thousand years old, where
offertory boxes, fixed on Oriental brackets, invite our alms. The odour
of the incense becomes more pronounced, and at last a door, hidden in
shadow at the end of this retreat, gives access to the venerable church
itself.

The church! It is a mixture of Byzantine basilica, mosque and desert
hut. Entering there, it is as if we were introduced suddenly to the
naïve infancy of Christianity, as if we surprised it, as it were, in
its cradle--which was indeed Oriental. The triple nave is full of little
children (here also, that is what strikes us first), of little mites
who cry or else laugh and play; and there are mothers suckling their
new-born babes--and all the time the invisible mass is being celebrated
beyond, behind the iconostasis. On the ground, on mats, whole families
are seated in circle, as if they were in their homes. A thick deposit of
white chalk on the defaced, shrunken walls bears witness to great age.
And over all this is a strange old ceiling of cedarwood, traversed by
large barbaric beams.

In the nave, supported by columns of marble, brought in days gone by
from Pagan temples, there are, as in all these old Coptic churches, high
transverse wooden partitions, elaborately wrought in the Arab fashion,
which divide it into three sections: the first, into which one comes
on entering the church, is allotted to the women, the second is for
the baptistery, and the third, at the end adjoining the iconostasis, is
reserved for the men.

These women who are gathered this morning in their apportioned space--so
much at home there with their suckling little ones--wear, almost all of