The foot replied, in a pouting and chagrined tone:
“You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer;–I have been bought and paid for; the old merchant knew what he was about; he bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him;–this is an ill turn which he has done you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in the subterranean pit of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him: he desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of the shadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?”
“Alas, no!–my jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, they were all stolen 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 present it to you gladly: I should feel unutterably wretched to think that I were the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis being lame.”
I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone, which must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.
She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me; and her eyes shone with bluish gleams of light.
She took her foot–which surrendered itself willingly this time–like a woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with much skill.
This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to assure herself that she was really no longer lame.
“Ah, how pleased my father will be!–he who was so unhappy because of my mutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation at work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intact until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance of Amenthi! Come with me to my father;–he will receive you kindly; for you have given me back my foot.”
I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic aspect; hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed the Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.
Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of green paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the table.
“It is only fair,” she observed smilingly, “that I should replace your paper-weight.”
She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a serpent; and we departed.
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly by us, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance: pylons and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined against the horizon.
We had reached our destination. The princess conducted me to the mountain of rose-colored granite, in the face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not its location been marked by two stel3Ž4 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 in their formation;–these corridors, of interminable length, opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways;–these pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum–prodigious works of art which no living eye can ever examine–interminable legends of granite which only the dead have time to read through all eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits; files of monstrous columns streatched far out of sight on every side, between which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame;–points of light which revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects became discernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones–grand old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened with naphtha and bitumen–all wearing pshents of gold, and breastplaces and gorgets glittering with precious stones; their eyes immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these nations, the cats, ibises, and crocodiles contemporary with 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 contemporary with the deluge; and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie–and buried in dreams.
Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two pre-Adamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples–forever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who favored 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: “it was this gentleman who restored it to me.”
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi–all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored 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 mustache with his fingers, and turned 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 with his scepter, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.
“What recompense do you desire?”
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;–the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty request.
“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 Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!” cried out at once all the Thrones 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 ancient King, “I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer; even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust;–behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are bars of steel!
“I shall be present on the last day of the world, with the same body and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.
“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of Osiris, 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 my rings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking me by the arm to make me get up.
“O you everlasting sleeper!–must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is after noon; don’t you recollect your promise to take me with you to see M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?”
“God! I forgot all, all about it,” I answered, dressing myself hurriedly; “we will go there at once; I have the permit lying on my desk.”
I started to find it;–but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, the little green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
