I had sweet memories of the
island that had been with me for many years--memories of still mornings
under the palm-trees, watching the gliding waters of the river, or
gazing across them to the long sweep of the empty sands; memories of
drowsy, golden noons, when the bright world seemed softly sleeping, and
the almost daffodil-colored temple dreamed under the quivering canopy of
blue; memories of evenings when a benediction from the lifted hands
of Romance surely fell upon the temple and the island and the river;
memories of moonlit nights, when the spirits of the old gods to whom the
temples were reared surely held converse with the spirits of the desert,
with Mirage and her pale and evading sisters of the great spaces, under
the brilliant stars. I was afraid, because I could not believe the
asservations of certain practical persons, full of the hard and almost
angry desire of "Progress," that no harm had been done by the creation
of the reservoir, but that, on the contrary, it had benefited the
temple. The action of the water upon the stone, they said with vehement
voices, instead of loosening it and causing it to crumble untimely away,
had tended to harden and consolidate it. Here I should like to lie, but
I resist the temptation. Monsieur Naville has stated that possibly the
English engineers have helped to prolong the lives of the buildings of
Philae, and Monsieur Maspero has declared that "the state of the temple
of Philae becomes continually more satisfactory.
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