the plutocracy of the whole world comes every
winter to disport itself, so much at least will remain to bear testimony
to the lofty and magnificent thought that inspired the earlier Arab
life. These mosques will continue to remain into the distant future,
even when men shall have ceased to pray in them, and the winged guests
shall have departed, for the want of those troughs of water from the
Nile, filled for them by the good imams, whose hospitality they repay
by making heard in the courts, beneath the arched roofs, beneath the
ceilings of cedarwood, the sweet, piping music of birds.

CHAPTER IV

THE HALL OF THE MUMMIES

There are two of us, and as we light our way by the aid of a lantern
through these vast halls we might be taken for a night watch on its
round. We have just shut behind us and doubly locked the door by which
we entered, and we know that we are alone, rigorously alone, although
this place is so vast, with its endless, communicating halls, its high
vestibules and great flights of stairs; mathematically alone, one might
say, for this palace that we are in is one quite out of the ordinary,
and all its outlets were closed and sealed at nightfall. Every night
indeed the doors are sealed, on account of the priceless relics that
are collected here. So we shall not meet with any living being in these
halls to-night, in spite of their vast extent and endless turnings, and
in spite too of all these mysterious things that are ranged on every
side and fill the place with shadows and hiding-places.

Our round takes us first along the ground floor over flagstones that
resound to our footsteps. It is about ten of the clock. Here and there
through some stray windows gleams a small patch of luminous blue sky,
lit by the stars which for the good folk outside lend transparency to
the night; but there, none the less, the place is filled with a solemn
gloom, and we lower our voices, remembering perhaps the dead that fill
the glass cases in the halls above.

And these things which line the walls on either side of us as we pass
also seem to be in the nature of receptacles for the dead. For the most
part they are sarcophagi of granite, proud and indestructible: some of
them, in the shape of gigantic boxes, are laid out in line on pedestals;
others, in the form of mummies, stand upright against the walls and
display enormous faces, surmounted by equally enormous head-dresses.
Assembled there they look like a lot of ma