peculiarly liable. The effect was charming,_bizarre_, and romantic.
Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity andpride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage overall the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the PrincessHermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.
I looked upon all who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight soauthentically Egyptian as very ridiculous people, and it seemed to methat the proper occupation of every sensible man should consist in themere fact of having a mummy's foot upon his desk.
Happily I met some friends, whose presence distracted me in myinfatuation with this new acquisition. I went to dinner with them, for Icould not very well have dined with myself.
When I came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a fewglasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillatedmy olfactory nerves. The heat of the room had warmed the natron,bitumen, and myrrh in which the _paraschistes_, who cut open the bodiesof the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was a perfume atonce sweet and penetrating, a perfume that four thousand years had notbeen able to dissipate.
The Dream of Egypt was Eternity. Her odours have the solidity of graniteand endure as long.
I soon drank deeply from the black cup of sleep. For a few hours allremained opaque to me. Oblivion and nothingness inundated me with theirsombre waves.
Yet light gradually dawned upon the darkness of my mind. Dreamscommenced to touch me softly in their silent flight.
The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld my chamber as it actuallywas. I might have believed myself awake but for a vague consciousnesswhich assured me that I slept, and that something fantastic was about totake place.
The odour of the myrrh had augmented in intensity, and I felt a slightheadache, which I very naturally attributed to several glasses ofchampagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods and our future fortunes.
I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which I sawnothing to justify. Every article of furniture was in its proper place.The lamp, softly shaded by its globe of ground crystal, burned upon itsbracket; the water-colour sketches shone under their Bohemian glass;the curtains hung down languidly; everything wore an aspect of tranquilslumber.
After a few moments, however, all this calm interior appeared to becomedisturbed. The woodwork cracked stealthily, the ash-covered log suddenlyemitted a jet of blue flame, and the discs of the pateras seemed likegreat metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things which wereabout to happen.
My eyes accidentally fell upon the desk where I had placed the foot ofthe Princess Hermonthis.
Instead of remaining quiet, as behoved a foot which had been embalmedfor four thousand years, it commenced to act in a nervous manner,contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled frog. Onewould have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into contact witha galvanic battery. I could distinctly hear the dry sound made by itslittle heel, hard as the hoof of a gazelle.
I became rather discontented with my acquisition, inasmuch as I wishedmy paper-weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and thought it veryunnatural that feet should walk about without legs, and I commenced toexperience a feeling closely akin to fear.
Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir, and heard a bumpingsound, like that caused by some person hopping on one foot across thefloor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold, that I felt astrange wind chill my back, and that my suddenly rising hair caused mynight-cap to execute a leap of several yards.
The bed-curtains opened and I beheld the strangest figure imaginablebefore me.
It was a young girl of a very deep coffee-brown complexion, like thebayadere Amani, and possessing the purest Egyptian type of perfectbeauty. Her eyes were almond shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so blackthat they seemed blue; her nose was exquisitely chiselled, almost Greekin its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for aCorinthian statue of bronze but for the prominence of her cheek-bonesand the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one torecognise her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic racewhich dwelt upon the banks of the Nile.
Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped like those of very young girls,were encircled by a peculiar kind of metal bands and bracelets of glassbeads; her hair was all twisted into little cords, and she wore uponher bosom a little idol-figure of green paste, bearing a whip with sevenlashes, which proved it to be an image of Isis; her brow was adornedwith a shining plate of gold, and a few traces of paint relieved thecoppery tint of her cheeks.
As for her costume, it was very odd indeed.
Fancy a _pagne_, or skirt, all formed of little strips of materialbedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, andapparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.
In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams Iheard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating likea monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with soenigmatical an intonation:
'Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased He loved his daughter, the dearman!'
One strange circumstance, which was not at all calculated to restoremy equanimity, was that the apparition had but one foot; the other wasbroken off at the ankle!
She approached the table where the foot was starting and fidgeting aboutmore than ever, and there supported herself upon the edge of the desk. Isaw her eyes fill with pearly gleaming tears.
Although she had not as yet spoken, I fully comprehended the thoughtswhich agitated her. She looked at her foot--for it was indeed herown--with an exquisitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness, butthe foot leaped and ran hither and thither, as though impelled on steelsprings.
Twice or thrice she extended her hand to seize it, but could notsucceed.
Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot--whichappeared to be endowed with a special life of its own--a very fantasticdialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been spokenthirty centuries ago in the syrinxes of the land of Ser. Luckily Iunderstood Coptic perfectly well that night.
The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as the tonesof a crystal bell:
'Well, my dear little foot, you always flee from me, yet I alwaystook good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl ofalabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed withpalm-oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with ahippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select _tatbebs_ for you, paintedand embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy of allthe young girls in Egypt. You wore on your great toe rings bearing thedevice of the sacred Scarabseus, and you supported one of the lightestbodies that a lazy foot could sustain.'
The foot replied in a pouting and chagrined tone:
'You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have beenbought and paid for. The old merchant knew what he was about. He boreyou a grudge for having refused to espouse him. This is an ill turnwhich he has done you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in thesubterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him.He desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of theshadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for myransom?'
'Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver were allstolen from me,' answered the Princess Hermonthis with a sob.
'Princess,' I then exclaimed, 'I never retained anybody's foot unjustly.Even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me, I presentit to you gladly. I should feel unutterably wretched to think that Iwere the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis beinglame.'
I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone whichmust have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.
She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me, and her eyes shone withbluish gleams of light.
She took her foot, which surrendered itself willingly this time, like awoman about to put on h
er little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg withmuch skill.
This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though toassure herself that she was really no longer lame.
'Ah, how pleased my father will be! He who was so unhappy because of mymutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation atwork to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intactuntil that last day when souls must be weighed in the balance ofAmenthi! Come with me to my father. He will receive you kindly, for youhave given me back my foot.'
I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in adressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonicaspect, hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed thePrincess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.
Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of greenpaste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered thetable.
'It is only fair,' she observed, smilingly, 'that I should replace yourpaper-weight.'
She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of aserpent, and we departed.
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluidand grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly byus, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance; pylonsand vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlinedagainst the horizon.
We had reached our destination.
The princess conducted me to a mountain of rose-coloured granite, in theface of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would havebeen difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had notits location been marked by two stelae wrought with sculptures.
Hermonthis kindled a torch and led the way before me.
We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock. Their walls,covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions,might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years intheir formation. These corridors of interminable length opened intosquare chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, throughwhich we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits againconducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewisedecorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, thesymbols of the _tau_ and _pedum_--prodigious works of art which noliving eye can ever examine--interminable legends of granite which onlythe dead have time to read through all eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, soimmeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits. Files ofmonstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, betweenwhich twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame; points of light whichrevealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted themummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects becamediscernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones--grandold men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackenedwith naphtha and bitumen--all wearing _pshents_ of gold, andbreastplates and gorgets glittering with precious stones, their eyesimmovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beardswhitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples,in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, alleternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code.Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles contemporarywith them--rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands--mewed,flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.
All the Pharaohs were there--Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus,Sesostris, Amenotaph--all the dark rulers of the pyramids and syrinxes.On yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros, who was contemporarywith the deluge, and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granitetable upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie, and buried in dreams.
Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-twopre-adamite kings, with their seventy-two peoples, for ever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a fewmoments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, whofavoured me with a most gracious nod.
'I have found my foot again! I have found my foot!' cried the princess,clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy. 'Itwas this gentleman who restored it to me.'
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi--all the black, bronzed, andcopper-coloured nations repeated in chorus:
'The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!'
Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.
He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his moustache with his fingers, andturned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.
'By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth,this is a brave and worthy lad!' exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me withhis sceptre, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.
'What recompense do you desire?'
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seemsimpossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis. Thehand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my wittyrequest.
'What country do you come from, and what is your age?'
'I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty-seven years old venerable Pharaoh.'
'Twenty-seven years old, and he wishes to espouse the PrincessHermonthis who is thirty centuries old!' cried out at once all theThrones and all the Circles of Nations.
Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.
'If you were even only two thousand years old,' replied the ancientking, 'I would willingly give you the princess, but the disproportionis too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who willlast well. You do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer. Eventhose who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than ahandful of dust. Behold, my flesh is solid as basalt, my bones are barsof steel!
'I will be present on the last day of the world with the same body andthe same features which I had during my lifetime. My daughter Hermonthiswill last longer than a statue of bronze.
'Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroadby the winds, and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms ofOsiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.
'See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,' he added,shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried myrings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shakingme by the arm to make me get up.
'Oh, you everlasting sleeper! Must I have you carried out into themiddle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It isafternoon. Don't you recollect your promise to take me with you to seeM. Aguado's Spanish pictures?'
'God! I forgot all, all about it,' I answered, dressing myselfhurriedly. 'We will go there at once. I have the permit lying there onmy desk.'
I started to find it, but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, insteadof the mummy's foot I had purchased the evening before, the little greenpaste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
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