Beyond the shops, following the line of the quay, there are other
hotels. Less aggressive, all of them, than the Winter Palace, they
have had the discretion not to raise themselves too high, and to cover
their fronts with white chalk in the Arab fashion, even to conceal
themselves in clusters of palm-trees.
And finally there is the colossal temple of Luxor, looking as out of
place now as the poor obelisk which Egypt gave us as a present, and
which stands to-day in the Place de la Concorde.
Bordering the Nile, it is a colossal grove of stone, about three
hundred yards in length. In epochs of a magnificence that is now
scarcely conceivable this forest of columns grew high and thick,
rising impetuously at the bidding of Amenophis and the great Ramses.
And how beautiful it must have been even yesterday, dominating in its
superb disarray this surrounding country, vowed for centuries to
neglect and silence!
But to-day, with all these things that men have built around it, you
might say that it no longer exists.
We reach an iron-barred gate and, to enter, have to show our permit to
the guards. Once inside the immense sanctuary, perhaps we shall find
solitude again.
