Her dwelling is some distance away, and I shall not reach it till the dead of night.

First of all I have to retrace my steps, to return along the whole avenue of rams, to pass again by the feet of the white giant, who has already assumed his phantomlike appearance, while the violet waves that bathed the town-mummy thicken and turn to a greyish-blue.  And then, leaving behind me the pylons guarded by the broken giants, I thread my way among the palaces of the centre.

It is among these palaces that I encounter for good and all the night, with the first cries of the owls and ospreys.  It is still warm there, on account of the heat stored by the stones during the day, but one feels nevertheless that the air is freezing.

At a crossing a tall human figure looms up, draped in black and armed with a baton.  It is a roving Bedouin, one of the guards, and this more or less is the dialogue exchanged between us (freely and succinctly translated): 

“Your permit, sir.”

“Here it is.”

(Here we combine our efforts to illuminate the said permit by the light of a match.)

“Good, I will go with you.”

“No.  I beg of you.”

“Yes; I had better.  Where are you going?”

“Beyond, to the temple of that lady—­you know, who is great and powerful and has a face like a lioness.”

“Ah! . . .  Yes, I think I understand that you would prefer to go alone.”  (Here the intonation becomes infantine.) “But you are a kind gentleman and will not forget the poor Bedouin all the same.”

He goes on his way.  On leaving the palaces I have still to traverse an extent of uncultivated country, where a veritable cold seizes me.  Above my head no longer the heavy suspended stones, but the far-off expanse of the blue night sky—­where are shining now myriads upon myriads of stars.  For the Thebans of old this beautiful vault, scintillating always with its powder of diamonds, shed no doubt only serenity upon their souls.  But for us, who knows, alas! it is on the contrary the field of the great fear, which, out of pity, it would have been better if we had never been able to see; the incommensurable black void, where the worlds in their frenzied whirling precipitate themselves like rain, crash into and annihilate one another, only to be renewed for fresh eternities.

All this is seen too vividly, the horror of it becomes intolerable, on a clear night like this, in a place so silent and littered so with ruins.  More and more the cold penetrates you—­the mournful cold of the sidereal spheres from which nothing now seems to protect you, so rarefied—­almost non-existent—­does the limpid atmosphere appear.  And the gravel, the poor dried herbs, that crackle under foot, give the illusion of the crunching noise we know at home on winter nights when the frost is on the ground.