Sardou's Cleopatra — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. 89 with so many just claims to celebrity, is, for me, a young queen,a sad, funereal kingdom. Let Egypt boast of its palaces and monuments, but the finest of all are only tombs. Beneath one’s feet sleep generations of motionless mummies. It is like a country wrapped in eternal remorse for its crimes. ‘The work of the living is to em- balm the dead. Everywhere are furnaces in which bodies are being consumed. Everywhere is the acrid odor of naphtha and bitumen. Every- where does human pride struggle miserably with eternity. What matter these remains of people who have long since ceased to breathe? Mon- strous art of embalming! I hate your false, vain marvels! Everything in this country, everything is odious to me; everything inspires me with horror, even its beauties, even its illustrious river there, an enigma in its course, and whose source has been sought for in vain for three thousand years. Why,if that stream should disdain to _ overflow, dealing as it does death and destruction, this country would lose all, its glory and its for- tune. Oh! how sad it is to have ever before my eyes that mournful river, with its silent flow, and to place my hopes in its eternal ravages. Mys- tery and granite, such is Egypt! A terrible » (E(0) Gomicbooks