Explore "The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt" by Théophile Gautier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A few minutes later the carriage stopped before the steps of the Hotel Shepheard, which has a sort of veranda provided with chairs and sofas for the convenience of travellers who desire to enjoy the cool air. We were received cordially, and given a fine room, very high-ceiled, with two beds provided with mosquito-nets, and a window looking out upon the Ezbekiyeh Square.
I did not expect to find Marilhat's painting before me, unchanged, and merely enlarged to the proportions of reality. The accounts of tourists who had recently returned from Egypt had made me aware that the Ezbekiyeh no longer looked the same as formerly, when the waters of the Nile turned it into a lake in times of flood, and when it still preserved its true Arab character.