It is cold and clear and blue.
The central bay of this hypostyle is in the same line as the road I have been following since I left the hall of Thothmes.

It prolongs and magnifies as in an apotheosis that same long avenue, for the gods and kings, which was the glory of Thebes, and which in the succession of the ages nothing has contrived to equal.

The columns which border it are so gigantic[*] that their tops, formed of mysterious full-blown petals, high up above the ground on which we crawl, are completely bathed in the diffuse clearness of the sky.

And enclosing this kind of nave on either side, like a terrible forest, is another mass of columns--monster columns, of an earlier style, of which the capitals close instead of opening, imitating the buds of some flower which will never blossom.
Sixty to the right, sixty to the left, too close together for their size, they grow thick like a forest of baobabs that wanted space: they induce a feeling of oppression without possible deliverance, of massive and mournful eternity.
[*] About 30 feet in circumference and 75 feet in height including the capital.
And this, forsooth, was the place that I had wished to traverse alone, without even the Bedouin guard, who at night believes it his duty to follow the visitors.

But now it grows lighter and lighter.