white cotton parasols, take themselves off in the direction of the Nile.
They disappear and the place belongs to us.

When we venture at last to return to the first sanctuary, where they had
lunched their fill in the shade, the guardians are busy clearing away
the leavings and the dirty paper. And they pack the dubious crockery,
which will be required for to-morrow's luncheon, into large chests on
which may be read in large letters of glory the names of the veritable
sovereigns of modern Egypt: "Thomas Cook & Son (Egypt Ltd.)."

All this happily ends with the first hypostyle. Nothing dishonours
the halls of the interior, where silence has again descended, the vast
silence of the noon of the desert.

In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, men already marvelled at this
temple, as at a relic of the most distant and nebulous past. The
geographer Strabo wrote in those days: "It is an admirable palace built
in the fashion of the Labyrinth save that it has fewer galleries." There
are galleries enough however, and one can readily lose oneself in its
mazy turnings. Seven chapels, consecrated to Osiris and to different
gods and goddesses of his suite; seven vaulted chambers; seven doors for
the processions of kings and multitudes; and, at the sides, numberless
halls, corridors, secondary chapels, dark chambers and hidden doorways.
That very primitive column, suggestive of reeds, which is called in
architecture the "plant column" and resembles a monstrous stem of
papyrus, rises here in a thick forest, to support the stones of the blue
ceilings, which are strewn with stars, in the likeness of the sky of
this country. In many cases these stones are missing and leave large
openings on to the real sky above. Their massiveness, which one might
have thought would secure them an endless duration, has availed them