And Yet How
Adorable It Is, This Kiosk Of Philae, In This The Abandonment That
Precedes Its Downfall!
Its columns placed, as it were, upon something
unstable, become thereby more slender, seem to raise higher still the
stone foliage of their capitals.
A veritable kiosk of dreamland now,
which one feels is about to disappear for ever under these waters
which will subside no more!
And now, for another few moments, it grows quite light again, and
tints of a warmer copper reappear in the sky. Often in Egypt when the
sun has set and you think the light is gone, this furtive recoloration
of the air comes thus to surprise you, before the darkness finally
descends. The reddish tints seem to return to the slender shafts that
surround us, and also, beyond, to the temple of the goddess, standing
there like a sheer rock in the middle of this little sea, which the
wind covers with foam.
On leaving the kiosk our boat - on this deep usurping water, among the
submerged palm-trees - makes a detour in order to lead us to the temple
by the road which the pilgrims of olden times used to travel on foot -
by that way which, a little while ago, was still magnificent, bordered
with colonnades and statues. But now the road is entirely submerged,
and will never be seen again. Between its double row of columns the
water lifts us to the height of the capitals, which alone emerge and
which we could touch with our hands.
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