But alas! even when we are outside, alone again on the expanse of
dazzling sands, we can no longer take things seriously. Abydos and the
desert have ceased to exist. The faces of those women remain to haunt
us, their faces and their hats, and those looks which they vouchsafed us
from over their solar spectacles. . . . The ugliness associated with the
name of Cook was once explained to me in this wise, and the explanation
at first sight seemed satisfactory: "The United Kingdom, justifiably
jealous of the beauty of its daughters, submits them to a jury when
they reach the age of puberty; and those who are classed as too ugly to
reproduce their kind are accorded an unlimited account at Thomas Cook &
Sons, and thus vowed to a course of perpetual travel, which leaves
them no time to think of certain trifles incidental to life." The
explanation, as I say, seduced me for the time being. But a more
attentive examination of the bands who infest the valley of the Nile
enables me to aver that all these good English ladies are of an age
notoriously canonical; and the catastrophe of procreation therefore,
supposing that such an accident could ever have happened to them, must
date back to a time long anterior to their enrolment. And I remain
perplexed!

Without conviction now, we make our way towards another temple,
guaranteed solitary. Indeed the sun blazes there a lonely sovereign in
the midst of a profound silence, and Egypt and the past take us again
into their folds.

Once more to Osiris, the god of heavenly awakening in the necropolis
of Abydos, this sanctuary was built by Ramses II. But the sands have
covered it with their winding sheet in vain, and have been able to
preserve for us only the lower and more deeply buried parts. Men in