"I know not," continued the nomarch. "That Greek is no longer alive.
But that man was so like Prince Ramses that when he entered thy chamber
Thou didst think him our lord. And Thou hast preferred to accuse thy
own self rather than our lord, and thine."
"Then that was not Ramses?" cried she, seizing her head. "And I, wretched woman, let a strange man take my son from his cradle. Ha! ha! ha!"
Then she laughed more and more. On a sudden, as if her legs had been cut from under her, she fell to the floor, her hands hopped a couple of times, and she died in hysteric laughter.
But on her face remained an expression of sorrow which even death could not drive from it.
CHAPTER XLII
THE western boundary of Egypt for a distance of more than a hundred geographic miles is composed of a wall of naked limestone hills about two hundred meters high, intersected by ravines. They run parallel to the Nile, from which they are sometimes five miles distant, sometimes one kilometer. Whoso should clamber up one of these hills and turn his face northward would see one of the strangest sights possible. He would have on his right hand the narrow but green plain cut lengthwise by the Nile; on his left he would see an endless yellow open region, varied by spots, white or brick colored.
Monotony, the irritating yellow color of the sand plain, the heat, and, above all, boundless immensity are the most peculiar traits of the Libyan desert, which extends westward from Egypt.
But viewed more nearly the desert is in fact less monotonous. Its sand is not level, but forms a series of swellings which recall immense waves of water. It is like a roused sea solidified on a sudden. But whoso should have the courage to go across that sea for an hour, two hours, a day, directly westward would see a new sight. On the horizon would appear eminences, sometimes cliffs and rocks of the strangest outlines. Under foot the sand would grow thinner, and from beneath it limestone rocks would emerge just like land out of water.
In fact that was a land, or even a country in the midst of a sand ocean. Around the limestone hills were valleys, in them the beds of streams and rivers, farther on a plain, and in the middle of it a lake with a bending line of shores and a sunken bottom.
But on these plains, hills, and heights no blade of grass grows; in the lake there is no drop of water; along the bed of the river no current moves. That is a landscape, even greatly varied with respect to forms, but a landscape from which all water has departed, the very last atom of moisture has dried from it; a dead landscape, where not only all vegetation has vanished, but even the fertile stratum of earth has been ground into dust or dried up into rock slabs.