Egypt (La Mort de Philae)

ace overpowering and suffocating-underground, no doubt-which is filled with the perfume of the incense of Arabia; and a noise of almost wicked movement, which si

n the midst of the smoke, held by these phantoms in mourning? Had we entered it unawares w

m. And the sorcerer, who plays the cymbals, is a kind old priest, or sacristan, who smiles paternally. If he makes all this noise, in a rhythm which in itself is full of joy, it is to mark the gladness of Easter morn, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ-and a little, too, no doubt, to distract the little ones, some of whom are woefully put ou

ilings and cries, deafens you! And what an air of antiquity marks all things here! The defaced walls, the low roof that one can easily touch, the gran

rs, a niche which covers the ancient stone on which, according to tradition, the Virgin Mary rested, with the child Jesus, in the course of the flight into Egypt

e of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in the world. And the Copts who still assemble there with venera

he old Pharaonic cults, amalgamated at that time with those of Greece, were so obscured under a mass of rites and formulae, that they had ceased to have any meaning. And nevertheless here, as in imperial Rome, there brooded the ferment of a passionat

human settlements are to be seen, little groups of houses of dried mud, where the whitened dome of the modest house of prayer is surmounted by a cross and not a cre

find your way thither. The quarter in which it is situated is enclosed within the walls of what was once a Roman fortress, and this fortress in its turn

e beginning of the ages, so many human eyes have been burnt beyond recovery. They keep us now in blinding whirlwinds, which swarm with flies. The "season" indeed is already over, and the foreign invaders have fled until next autumn. Egypt is now more Egyptian, beneath a more burning sky. The sun of this Easter Sunday is as hot as ours of July, and the ground seems as if it would perish of drought. But it is always thus in the springtime of this rainless country; the trees, which have kept their leaves throughout the winter, shed them in April as ours do in November. There is no shade anywhere and everything suffers. Everything grows yellow on the yellow sands. But there is no cause for uneasiness

ouses 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. E

gyptians 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

ront 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 y

ull 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 gr

verse wooden partitions, elaborately wrought in the Arab fashion, which divide it into three sections: the first, into which one comes on entering

t all of them, the long black silk veils of former days. In their harmonious and endlessly restless groups, the gowns a la franque and

this wall-pierced by several doorways-that mass is now being said. From this last sanctuary shut off thus from the people comes the vague sound of singing; from time to time a priest raises a faded silk curtain and from the threshold makes the sign of blessing. His vestments are of gold

Everything is askew, bent, dusty and worn-out. The daylight comes from above, through narrow barred windows. There is a lack of air, so that one almost stifles. B

ting of the mass, is the ceaseless movement, the pious agitation of the faithful; and more even than that, the startling noise that rise

berdiers overawe the crowd-here, on the contrary, the simplicity of this primitive cult is touching and respectable in the extreme. These Copts who install themselves in their church, as round their firesides, who make their home