"Allah!" the child was singing as he passed upon his way.
Pigeons circled above their pretty towers. The bats came out, as if they
knew how precious is their black at evening against the ethereal lemon
color, the orange and the red. The little obelisk beyond the last
sphinx on the left began to change, as in Egypt all things change at
sunset--pylon and dusty bush, colossus and baked earth hovel, sycamore,
and tamarisk, statue and trotting donkey. It looked like a mysterious
finger pointed in warning toward the sky. The Nile began to gleam. Upon
its steel and silver torches of amber flame were lighted. The Libyan
mountains became spectral beyond the tombs of the kings. The tiny, rough
cupolas that mark a grave close to the sphinxes, in daytime dingy and
poor, now seemed made of some splendid material worthy to roof the mummy
of a king. Far off a pool of the Nile, that from here looked like a
little palm-fringed lake, turned ruby-red. The flags from the standard
of Luxor, among the minarets, flew out straight against a sky that was
pale as a primrose almost cold in its amazing delicacy.
I turned, and behind me the moon was risen. Already its silver rays
fell upon the ruins of Karnak; upon the thickets of lotus columns; upon
solitary gateways that now give entrance to no courts; upon the sacred
lake, with its reeds, where the black water-fowl were asleep; upon
sloping walls, shored up by enormous stanchions, like ribs of some
prehistoric leviathan; upon small chambers; upon fallen blocks of
masonry, fragments of architrave and pavement, of capital and cornice;
and upon the people of Karnak--those fascinating people who still
cling to their habitation in the ruins, faithful through misfortune,
affectionate with a steadfastness that defies the cruelty of Time;
upon the little, lonely white sphinx with the woman's face and the
downward-sloping eyes full of sleepy seduction; upon Rameses II.
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