Jerusalem & The Holy Land

Pierre Loti, Loti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138869660
• eBook ISBN: 9781136190834
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 2002. Pierre Loti, perhaps the world's most prolific, romantic and exotic travel writer turns his attention to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

CHAPTER XXIII

O crux, ave spes unica !

Monday, 16th April.

THIS morning our horses were saddled and our trunks packed in readiness to leave Jerusalem and to continue our journey through Palestine towards the Saracen town of Damascus, in the hope of finding at least distraction and diversion in the death-like charm of Eastern things.

But an icy rain begins to fall from a sky uniformly black. Winter has suddenly returned, with roaring wind, torrential rain and hail.

And we decide to postpone our departure till to-morrow.

The day, like that of our arrival here, is spent by the fireside, amid a heterogeneous lot of people, in the devastating dreariness of a hotel sitting-room on a wet day. For our diversion there are the eternal sellers of crucifixes and rosaries, and the odious little reading tables littered with the latest papers from Europe.

Towards evening the rain ceases and I wander out into the mournful little streets with their dripping house-tops. The sky is still overcast as I bend my steps for one last time towards the Holy Sepulchre, led thither by a feeling that escapes definition.

It is the desolate hour of the twilight, the hour before the night lamps of the basilicas are lit, when everything is left in darkness—and, left, too, without guards, as if in such a place profanation and sacrilege were beyond daring.

Near the entrance, on the “Stone of Unction,” a mother has placed her few months’ old infant, and, with a smile of confident joy, is gently rolling it, so that every part of its little body may come in contact with the holy marble.

Farther on the darkness increases—and I grope my way, brushing against indistinct groups that are walking without noise. Against the pillars, against the columns, black down-sunken heaps indicate the presence of the beggars, the cripples, the paralytics, who here are perpetual guests. Beneath the cloud of incense, which, above, catches still a little of the light from the cupolas, hangs the heavy, fetid odour of death.

By winding ways, which are now familiar to me, I proceed to the strange underground crypt of St Helena. It was to this same place I came on the morrow of my arrival in Jerusalem, but now it is with a heart altogether different, a heart grown hard, in which the earlier emotion, alas ! no longer finds a place.

Afterwards, returning to the vicinity of the Sepulchre, I ascend almost involuntarily the staircase leading to the high chapel that stands on Golgotha.

And even here, in this place of ecstasies and sobs, it does not seem to me that anything in me is capable of emotion again. Calmly I examine the altar, the three upreared crosses, the three large figures of the crucified which stand out before a kind of silver-gilt rainbow ; then the very low ceiling, quaintly painted in the representation of a blue sky, in which are golden stars, and angels, and human-faced moons contemplating the earth. In spite of the candles and lamps and its exceeding smallness the chapel is filled with a persistent gloom. It is late, and at the moment, except for two or three weeping women sitting in dark corners, the place is empty.

But people, before leaving the Holy Sepulchre, continue to ascend one by one, to kneel here and offer up a prayer. Leaning against a pillar near the altar I stand and watch them.

First comes a young Cossack soldier, martial and proud of bearing, who drags himself on his knees beneath the altar-piece to kiss the place where, in the rock of Calvary, the cross was fixed.

Some women whose nationality I know not, in long black veils, follow him ; with arms upraised and outspread hands they pray and weep, in a language and according to rites which to me are unknown.

Presently an old woman arrives, humble, quie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter I
• Chapter II
• Chapter III
• Chapter IV
• Chapter V
• Chapter VI
• Chapter VII
• Chapter VIII
• Chapter IX
• Chapter X
• Chapter XI
• Chapter XII
• Chapter XIII
• Chapter XIV
• Chapter XV
• Chapter XVI
• Chapter XVII
• Chapter XVIII
• Chapter XIX
• Chapter XX
• Chapter XXI
• Chapter XXII
• Chapter XXIII