Here they enjoyed the unusual pleasure of a shower of rain. On visiting the ruins of Oxyrinchus, Denon suffered one of the penalties attached to a hopeless creed; beholding around him nothing but desolation and sterility, a thousand melancholy ideas glided into his mind; he saw the desert encroaching upon the cultivated soil, as the domain of death encroaches upon life; the tombs in the pathless waste seemed the emblems of death and annihilation. The gayety described by Signora Albrizzi had now fled. He thought himself alone, and felt all that awful solitude inspired by a want of faith in the spiritual nature of man, that faith which sheds around us, wherever we move, a light by which we discern the links that unite us to our Creator, and to every thing noble and immortal in the works of his hands. He was not, however, alone. Desaix had wandered to the same spot, and having apparently yielded, like himself, to the fatal error of the times, experienced the same sensations, and was oppressed by the same gloom. They shortly afterward set out together, escorted by three hundred men, on an excursion to the ruins of Hermopolis; which, being the first monument of ancient Egyptian architecture that he beheld, the Pyramids excepted, became in his mind the type of that sublime style. Notwithstanding the number of his escort, Denon soon found that, although arms might indeed open him a way to places which had hitherto been inaccessible to travellers, other circumstances, over which neither himself nor Desaix could exercise any control, prevented him from maturely studying what he beheld. A few hours satisfied the curiosity of the general, and overwhelmed the soldiers, who felt no curiosity about the matter, with fatigue. It was therefore necessary to be contented with a few fugitive glances, as it were, with a few sketches hastily made, and the hope of returning again under more favourable auspices. On approaching Tentyris Denon ventured, he says, to propose that the army should halt there. Desaix, though no less sensible than himself of the charms of these antique ruins, had his mind filled with other cares, and met the proposal with anger. Passion, however, could possess but a momentary influence over that beautiful mind; shortly afterward he sought out the enthusiastic traveller, in whose company he visited Denderah, and admired the sublimity of its ponderous architecture. In the evening, Latournerie, a young officer remarkable for his courage and the delicacy of his taste, observed to Denon, “Ever since I have arrived in Egypt, continual disappointment has made me ill and melancholy. The sight of Denderah has revived me. What I have seen this day has repaid me for all my fatigues; and whatever may be the fate to which the present expedition shall lead me, the remembrance of this day will cause me to rejoice, as long as I live, that I was engaged in it.”