horrible undertaker's men in greasy jackets
and shiny top hats. I see.... No, I'll stop; it's too horrible.

"Near the wall, in a remote plot, a grave had been dug in frightful
yellow pebbly clay. It was there that they left the dead man whose
name I no longer remember.

"While they were lowering the casket, I looked at my hands, those
hands which in that strangely lighted country had pressed the hands of
Antinea. A great pity for my body seized me, a great fear of what
threatened it in these cities of mud. 'So,' I said to myself, 'it may
be that this body, this dear body, will come to such an end! No, no,
my body, precious above all other treasures, I swear to you that I
will spare you that ignominy; you shall not rot under a registered
number in the filth of a suburban cemetery. Your brothers in love, the
fifty knights of orichalch, await you, mute and grave, in the red
marble hall. I shall take you back to them.'

"A _mysterious love_. Shame to him who retails the secrets of his
loves. The Sahara lays its impassable barrier about Antinea; that is
why the most unreasonable requirements of this woman are, in reality,
more modest and chaste than your marriage will be, with its vulgar
public show, the bans, the invitations, the announcements telling an
evil-minded and joking people that after such and such an hour, on
such and such a day, you will have the right to violate your little
tupenny virgin.

"I think that is all I have to tell you. No, there is still one thing
more. I told you a while ago about the red marble hall. South of
Cherchell, to the west of the Mazafran river, on a hill which in the
early morning, emerges from the mists of the Mitidja, there is a
mysterious stone pyramid. The natives call it, 'The Tomb of the
Christian.' That is where the body of Antinea's ancestress, that
Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, was laid to
rest. Though it is placed in the path of invasions, this tomb has kept
its treasure. No one has ever been able to discover the painted room
where the beautiful body reposes in a glass casket. All that the
ancestress has been able to do, the descendant will be able to surpass
in grim magnificence. In the center of the red marble hall, on the
rock whence comes the plaint of the gloomy fountain, a platform is
reserved. It is there, on an orichalch throne, with the Egyptian
head-dress and the golden serpent on her brow and the trident of
Neptune in her hand, that t