as absent the air was so clear that on the background
of the white sand a man could distinguish the general outline of
objects, even when small or distant. The piercing cold also diminished.
All advanced now in silence, and sank, as they walked, in the sand to
their ankles. Suddenly a tumult and cries rose among the Asiatics,

"A sphinx! Look, a sphinx! We shall not escape from this desert if
specters show themselves all the time."

Indeed, outlines of a sphinx on a white limestone hill were seen very
clearly. The body of a lion, an immense head with an Egyptian cap, and
as it were a human profile.

"Calm yourselves, barbarians," said the old Libyan. "That is no sphinx;
it is a lion, and he will do no harm, for he is occupied in eating."

"Indeed, that is a lion!" confirmed the prince halting. "But how he
resembles a sphinx."

"He is the father of our sphinxes," added the priest in a low voice.
"His face recalls a man's features, his mane is the wig."

"And our great sphinx, that at the pyramids?"

"Many ages before Menes," said Pentuer, "when there were no pyramids
yet, there was on that spot a rock which looked like a recumbent lion,
as if the gods wished in that way to indicate the beginning of the
desert. The holy priests of that period commanded artists to hew the
rock around with more accuracy and to fill out its lacks by additions.
The artists, seeing people oftener than lions, cut out the face of a
man, and thus the first sphinx had its origin."

"To which we give divine honor," said the prince, smiling.

"And justly," answered the priest. "For the gods made the first
features of this work and men finished them under divine guidance. Our
sphinx by its size and mysteriousness recalls the desert. It has the
posture of spirits wandering through it, and terrifies men as does the
desert. That sphinx is really the son of the gods and the father of
terror."

"Everything has in its own way an earthly beginning," answered the
prince. "The Nile does not flow from heaven, but from certain mountains
which lie beyond Ethiopia. The pyramids, which Herhor said were an
image of our state, are built on the model of mountain summits. And our
temples, too, with their pylons and obelisks, with their gloom and
coolness, do they not recall caves and mountains, extending along the
Nile valley? How many times in hunting have I not gone astray among
eastern ridges! I have always struck upon some strange collection of
rocks w