Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/192

 bells in the church-tower (there are nine of them — a full chime) began to ring, not to call the monks, for they were already there, but as if to summon the spirits of the dead, or angels hovering in the air, to bend lower to witness the grand ceremony of the prostration before the cross. The curtain which screened the inner sanctuary was drawn aside, and the priest emerged in gorgeous robes, supported or followed by others with lighted candles, bearing on a salver raised above his head a crucifix surrounded with flowers, which was placed on a low stand in the centre of the nave, around which the monks circled three times, and to which they made repeated prostrations. What degree of heart-worship there may have been in this, I cannot tell; but to me it looked only like a sacred pantomime.

As I sat amid such strange surroundings, I almost lost my personal identity. Who was I, to be here at this hour of night in a monastery, sitting in a monk's chair, and listening to these mournful chantings — these prayers for the living and the dead? I was already far gone into the region of shades, and it seemed doubtful if I should ever return to the living world again, if I had not escaped to the upper air, where, in the silence and peace of the night, finding that the world was still unchanged, that the stars were still above me, and the mountains round about me, I recovered consciousness, and my soul entered again into the body. But it is hard to shake off the feeling of unnaturalness which has taken possession of me. I feel as if I were in a dream: I see men as trees walking. Every nook and corner of this old, rambling Convent-Castle is haunted by the spirits of the dead. The place is full of ghosts. I hear them at night when the winds howl and moan amid the creaking timbers, and sigh along the walls, and die away through the passes of the mountains. It seems as