And The
Latter Persists In Its Regard Of The Dead Moon, Preserving Still The
Old Disconcerting Smile.
It becomes more and more difficult to believe
that here before us is a real colossus, so surely does it seem nothing
other than a dilated reflection of a thing which exists /elsewhere/,
in some other world.
And behind in the distance are the three
triangular mountains. Them, too, the fog envelops, till they also
cease to exist, and become pure visions of the Apocalypse.
Now it is that little by little an intolerable sadness is expressed in
those large eyes with their empty sockets - for, at this moment, the
ultimate secret, that which the Sphinx seems to have known for so many
centuries, but to have withheld in melancholy irony, is this: that all
these dead men and women who sleep in the vast necropolis below have
been fooled, and the awakening signal has not sounded for a single one
of them; and that the creation of mankind - mankind that thinks and
suffers - has had no rational explanation, and that our poor
aspirations are vain, but so vain as to awaken pity.
CHAPTER II
THE PASSING OF CAIRO
Ragged, threatening clouds, like those that bring the showers of our
early spring, hurry across a pale evening sky, whose mere aspect makes
you cold. A wintry wind, raw and bitter, blows without ceasing, and
brings with it every now and then some furtive spots of rain.
A carriage takes me towards what was once the residence of the great
Mehemet Ali:
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