Now that we are about to retire, what will happen here, with the complicity of silence, in the darkest hours of the night?  Will they remain inert and rigid, all these embalmed bodies, once left to themselves, who pretended to be so quiet because we were there?  What exchanges of old human fluid will recommence, as who can doubt they do each night between one coffin and another.  Formerly these kings and queens, in their anxiety as to the future of their mummy, had foreseen violation, pillage and scattering amongst the sands of the desert, but never this:  that they would be reunited one day, almost all unveiled, so near to one another under panes of glass.  Those who governed Egypt in the lost centuries and were never known except by history, by the papyri inscribed with hieroglyphics, brought thus together, how many things will they have to say to one another, how many ardent questions to ask about their loves, about their crimes!  As soon as we shall have departed, nay, as soon as our lantern, at the end of the long galleries, shall seem no more than a foolish, vanishing spot of fire, will not the “forms” of whom the attendants are so afraid, will they not start their nightly rumblings and in their hollow mummy voices, whisper, with difficulty, words? . . .

Heavens!  How dark it is!  Yet our lantern has not gone out.  But it seems to grow darker and darker.  And at night, when all is shut up, how one smells the odour of the oils in which the shrouds are saturated, and, more intolerable still, the sickly stealthy stench, almost, of all these dead bodies! . . .

As I traverse the obscurity of these endless halls, a vague instinct of self-preservation induces me to turn back again, and look behind.  And it seems to me that already the woman with the baby is slowly raising herself, with a thousand precautions and stratagems, her head still completely covered.  While farther down, that dishevelled hair. . . .  Oh!  I can see her well, sitting up with a sudden jerk, the ghoul with the enamel eyes, the lady Nsitanebashru!

CHAPTER V

A CENTRE OF ISLAM

     “To learn is the duty of every Moslem.” 
     —­Verse from the Hadith or Words of the Prophet.

In a narrow street, hidden in the midst of the most ancient Arab quarters of Cairo, in the very heat of a close labyrinth mysteriously shady, an exquisite doorway opens into a wide space bathed in sunshine; a doorway formed of two elaborate arches, and surmounted by a high frontal on which intertwined arabesques form wonderful rosework, and holy writings are enscrolled with the most ingenious complications.