Each day at noon a new band arrives, on heedless and unfortunate donkeys.

The tables and the crockery remain, of course, in the old temple! Let us escape quickly, if possible before the sight shall have become graven on our memory.
But alas! even when we are outside, alone again on the expanse of dazzling sands, we can no longer take things seriously.

Abydos and the desert have ceased to exist.

The faces of those women remain to haunt us, their faces and their hats, and those looks which they vouchsafed us from over their solar spectacles.

.