And out of them rise the points of two obelisks, sharp as the blade of a lance.

And then, at once, I understand--Thebes! Thebes! Last evening it was hidden in the shadow and I did not know it was so near.

But Thebes assuredly it is, for nothing else in the world could produce such an apparition.

And I salute with a kind of shudder of respect this unique and sovereign ruin, which had haunted me for many years, but which until now life had not left me time to visit.
And now for Luxor, which in the epoch of the Pharaohs was a suburb of the royal town, and is still its port.

It is there, it seems, where we must stop our dahabiya in order to proceed to the fabulous palace which the rising sun has just disclosed to us.
And while my equipage of bronze--intoning that song, as old as Egypt and everlastingly the same, which seems to help the men in their arduous work--is busy unfastening the chain which binds us to the bank, I continue to watch the distant apparition.