When we arrive at the walls of what used to be the Roman citadel we have to descend from our carriage, and passing through a low doorway penetrate on foot into the labyrinth of a Coptic quarter which is dying of dust and old age.  Deserted houses that have become the refuges of outcasts; mushrabiyas, worm-eaten and decayed; little mousetrap alleys that lead us under arches of the Middle Ages, and sometimes close over our heads by reason of the fantastic bending of the ruins.  Even by such a route as this are we conducted to a famous basilica!  Were it not for these groups of Copts, dressed in their Sunday garb, who make their way like us through the ruins to the Easter mass, we should think that we had lost our way.

And how pretty they look, these women draped like phantoms in their black silks.  Their long veils do not completely hide them, as do those of the Moslems.  They are simply placed over their hair and leave uncovered the delicate features, the golden necklet and the half-bared arms that carry on their wrists thick twisted bracelets of virgin gold.  Pure Egyptians as they are, they have preserved the same delicate profile, the same elongated eyes, as mark the old goddesses carved in bas-relief on the Pharaonic walls.  But some, alas, amongst the young ones have discarded their traditional costume, and are arrayed a la franque, in gowns and hats.  And such gowns, such hats, such flowers!  The very peasants of our meanest villages would disdain them.  Oh! why cannot someone tell these poor little women, who have it in their power to be so adorable, that the beautiful folds of their black veils give to them an exquisite and characteristic distinction, while this poor tinsel, which recalls the mid-Lent carnivals, makes of them objects that excite our pity!

In one of the walls which now surround us there is a low and shrinking doorway.  Can this be the entrance to the basilica?  The idea seems absurd.  And yet some of the pretty creatures in the black veils and bracelets of gold, who were in front of us, have disappeared through it, and already the perfume of the censers is wafted towards us.  A kind of corridor, astonishingly poor and old, twists itself suspiciously, and then issues into a narrow court, more than a thousand years old, where offertory boxes, fixed on Oriental brackets, invite our alms.  The odour of the incense becomes more pronounced, and at last a door, hidden in shadow at the end of this retreat, gives access to the venerable church itself.

The church!  It is a mixture of Byzantine basilica, mosque and desert hut.  Entering there, it is as if we were introduced suddenly to the naive infancy of Christianity, as if we surprised it, as it were, in its cradle—­which was indeed Oriental.  The triple nave is full of little children (here also, that is what strikes us first), of little mites who cry or else laugh and play; and there are mothers suckling their new-born babes—­and all the time the invisible mass is being celebrated beyond, behind the iconostasis.  On the ground, on mats, whole families are seated in circle, as if they were in their homes.  A thick deposit of white chalk on the defaced, shrunken walls bears witness to great age.  And over all this is a strange old ceiling of cedarwood, traversed by large barbaric beams.