Between its double row of columns the water lifts us to the height of the capitals, which alone emerge and which we could touch with our hands.

It seems like some journey of the end of time, in a kind of deserted Venice, which is about to topple over, to sink and be forgotten.
We arrive at the temple.

Above our heads rise the enormous pylons, ornamented with figures in bas-relief: an Isis who stretches out her arms as if she were making signs to us, and numerous other divinities gesticulating mysteriously.

The door which opens in the thickness of these walls is low, besides being half flooded, and gives on to depths already in darkness.

We row on and enter the sanctuary, and as soon as one boat has crossed the sacred threshold the boatmen stop their song and suddenly give voice to the new cry that has been taught them for the benefit of the tourists: "Hip! Hip! Hip! Hurrah!" Coming at this moment, when, with heart oppressed by all the utilitarian vandalism that surrounds us, we were entering the sanctuary, what an effect of gross and imbecile profanation this bellowing of English joy produces! The boatmen know, moreover, that they have been displaced, that their day has gone for ever; perhaps even, in the depths of their Nubian souls, they understand us, for all that we have imposed silence on them.