landing-stage which formerly gave on to
the Nile. It was there that the God Amen, carried and followed by long
trains of priests, came every year to take his golden barge for a solemn
procession. But it leads to-day only to the cornfields, for, in the
course of successive centuries, the river has receded little by little
and now winds its course a thousand yards away in the direction of
Libya.

We can see, beyond, the old sacred Nile between the clusters of
palm-trees on its banks; meandering there like a rosy pathway, which
remains, nevertheless, in this hour of universal incandescence,
astonishingly pale, and gleams occasionally with a bluish light. And
on the farther bank, from one end to the other of the western horizon,
stretches the chain of the Libyan mountains behind which the sun is
about to plunge; a chain of red sandstone, parched since the beginning
of the world--without a rival in the preservation to perpetuity of dead
bodies--which the Thebans perforated to its extreme depths to fill it
with sarcophagi.

We watch the sun descend. But we turn also to see, behind us, the ruins
in this the traditional moment of their apotheosis. Thebes, the immense
town-mummy, seems all at once to be ablaze--as if its old stones were
able still to burn; all its blocks, fallen or upright, appear to have
been suddenly made ruddy by the glow of fire.

On this side, too, the view embraces great peaceful distances. Past the
last pylons, and beyond the crumbling ramparts the country, down there
behind the town, presents the same appearance as that we were facing a
moment before. The same cornfields, the same woods of date-trees,
that make a girdle of green palms around the ruins. And, right in the
background, a chain of mountains is lit up and glows with a vivid coral
colour. It is the chain of the Arabian desert, lying parallel to that of
Libya, along the whole length of the Nile Valley--which is thus
guarded on right and left by stones and sand stretched out in profound
solitudes.

In all the surrounding country which we command from this spot there
is no indication of the present day; only here and there, amongst the
palm-trees, the villages of the field labourers, whose houses of dried
earth can scarcely have changed since the days of the Pharaohs. Our
contemporary desecrators have up till now respected the infinite
desuetude of the place, and, for the tourists who begin to haunt it, no
one yet has dared to build a hotel.