On the way to the tombs of the kings I went to the temple of Kurna,
that lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored massive façade, its heaps
of fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough,
columns recalling Medinet-Abu. There is not very much to see, but from
there one has a fine view of other temples--of the Ramesseum, looking
superb, like a grand skeleton; of Medinet-Abu, distant, very pale gold
in the morning sunlight; of little Deir-al-Medinet, the pretty child of
the Ptolemies, with the heads of the seven Hathors. And from Kurna the
Colossi are exceptionally grand and exceptionally personal, so personal
that one imagines one sees the expressions of the faces that they no
longer possess.
Even if you do not go into the tombs--but you will go--you must ride
to the tombs of the kings; and you must, if you care for the finesse of
impressions, ride on a blazing day and toward the hour of noon. Then the
ravine is itself, like the great act that demonstrates a temperament.
It is the narrow home of fire, hemmed in by brilliant colors, nearly
all--perhaps quite all--of which could be found in a glowing furnace.
Every shade of yellow is there--lemon yellow, sulphur yellow, the yellow
of amber, the yellow of orange with its tendency toward red, the yellow
of gold, sand color, sun color. Cannot all these yellows be found in a
fire? And there are the reds--pink of the carnation, pink of the coral,
red of the little rose that grows in certain places of sands, red of
the bright flame’s heart. And all these colors are mingled in complete
sterility. And all are fused into a fierce brotherhood by the sun. and
like a flood, they seem flowing to the red and the yellow mountains,
like a flood that is flowing to its sea. You are taken by them toward
the mountains, on and on, till the world is closing in, and you know the
way must come to an end. And it comes to an end--in a tomb.
You go to a door in the rock, and a guardian lets you in, and wants to
follow you in. Prevent him if you can. Pay him. Go in alone. For this
is the tomb of Amenhotep II.; and he himself is here, far down, at rest
under the mountain, this king who lived and reigned more than fourteen
hundred years before the birth of Christ. The ravine-valley leads to
him, and you should go to him alone. He lies in the heart of the living
rock, in the dull heat of the earth’s bowels, which is like no other
heat. You descend by stairs and corridors, you pass over a well by a
bridge, you pass through a naked chamber; and the king is not there. And
you go on down another staircase, and along another corridor, and you
come into a pillared chamber, with paintings on its walls, and on
its pillars, paintings of the king in the presence of the gods of the
underworld, under stars in a soft blue sky. And below you, shut in on
the farther side by the solid mountain in whose breast you have all this
time been walking, there is a crypt. And you turn away from the bright
paintings, and down there you see the king.
Many years ago in London I went to the private view of the Royal Academy
at Burlington House. I went in the afternoon, when the galleries were
crowded with politicians and artists, with dealers, gossips, quidnuncs,
and _flaneurs_; with authors, fashionable lawyers, and doctors; with men
and women of the world; with young dandies and actresses _en vogue_.
A roar of voices went up to the roof. Every one was talking, smiling,
laughing, commenting, and criticizing. It was a little picture of the
very worldly world that loves the things of to-day and the chime of the
passing hours. And suddenly some people near me were silent, and some
turned their heads to stare with a strangely fixed attention. And I saw
coming toward me an emaciated figure, rather bent, much drawn together,
walking slowly on legs like sticks. It was clad in black, with a gleam
of color. Above it was a face so intensely thin that it was like the
face of death. And in this face shone two eyes that seemed full of--the
other world. And, like a breath from the other world passing, this man
went by me and was hidden from me by the throng. It was Cardinal Manning
in the last days of his life.
The face of the king is like his, but it has an even deeper pathos as it
looks upward to the rock. And the king’s silence bids you be silent,
and his immobility bids you be still. And his sad, and unutterable
resignation sifts awe, as by the desert wind the sand is sifted into the
temples, into the temple of your heart. And you feel the touch of time,
but the touch of eternity, too. And as, in that rock-hewn sanctuary, you
whisper “_Pax vobiscum_,” you say it for all the world.