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., with
the face of a kindly child, not of a king; upon the Sphinx, bereft of
its companion, which crouches before the kiosk of Taharga, the King of
Ethiopia; upon those two who stand together as if devoted, yet by their
attitudes seem to express characters diametrically opposed, grey men and
vivid, the one with folded arms calling to Peace, the other with arms
stretched down in a gesture of crude determination, summoning War, as
if from the underworld; upon the granite foot and ankle in the temple
of Rameses III., which in their perfection, like the headless Victory
in Paris, and the Niobide Chiaramonti in the Vatican, suggest a great
personality that once met with is not to be forgotten: upon these and