It is Egypt, the country--Egypt, our ancient mother.

And there before us must once have stood a temple reverenced of the people, or some great vanished town; its fragments of columns and sculptured capitals are strewn about in the fields of lucerne.

How inexplicable it seems that this land of ancient splendours, which never ceased indeed to be nutritive and prodigiously fertile, should have returned, for some hundreds of years now, to the humble pastoral life of the peasants.
Through the green crops and the assembled herds our pathway seems to lead to a kind of hill rising alone in the midst of the plains--a hill which is neither of the same colour nor the same nature as the mountains of the surrounding deserts.

Behind us the portico recedes little by little in the distance; its tall imposing silhouette, as mournful and solitary, throws an infinite sadness on this sea of meadows, which spread their peace where once was a centre of magnificence.
The wind now rises in sharp, lashing gusts--the wind of Egypt that never seems to fall, and is bitter and wintry for all the burning of the sun.

The growing corn bends before it, showing the gloss of its young quivering leaves, and the herded beasts move close to one another and turn their backs to the squall.
As we draw nearer to this singular hill it is revealed as a mass of ruins.