azed at him with admiration and
astonishment, but when she had feasted her eyes on the stuffs and
ornaments he wore, she fixed them with much greater interest and
attention on the tall and youthful figure at his side.

"Like Hui, the cook's fat poodle, beside a young lion," thought she to
herself, as she noted the bustling step of the one and the independent
and elastic gait of the other. She felt irresistibly tempted to mimic
the older man, but this audacious impulse was soon quelled for scarcely
had the guide explained to the Roman that it was here that those pious
recluses had their cells who served the god in voluntary captivity, as
being consecrated to Serapis, and that they received their food through
those windows--here he pointed upwards with his staff when suddenly a
shutter, which the cicerone of this ill-matched pair had touched with
his stick, flew open with as much force and haste as if a violent gust
of wind had caught it, and flung it back against the wall.--And no less
suddenly a man's head-of ferocious aspect and surrounded by a shock of
gray hair like a lion's mane--looked out of the window and shouted to
him who had knocked, in a deep and somewhat overloud voice.

"If my shutter had been your back, you impudent rascal, your stick would
have hit the right thing. Or if I had a cudgel between my teeth instead
of a tongue, I would exercise it on you till it was as tired as that
of a preacher who has threshed his empty straw to his congregation for
three mortal hours. Scarcely is the sun risen when we are plagued by
the parasitical and inquisitive mob. Why! they will rouse us at midnight
next, and throw stones at our rotten old shutters. The effects of my
last greeting lasted you for three weeks--to-day's I hope may act a
little longer. You, gentlemen there, listen to me. Just as the raven
follows an army to batten on the dead, so that fellow there stalks on
in front of strangers in order to empty their pockets--and you, who call
yourself an interpreter, and in learning Greek have forgotten the little
Egyptian you ever knew, mark this: When you have to guide strangers take
them to see the Sphinx, or to consult the Apis in the temple of Ptah,
or lead them to the king's beast-garden at Alexandria, or the taverns
at Hanopus, but don't bring them here, for we are neither pheasants, nor
flute-playing women, nor miraculous beasts, who take a pleasure in being
stared at. You, gentlemen, ought to choose a better g