d. As far as the eye could see, extended
files of gigantic columns, between which sparkled livid stars of yellow
light. These glittering points of light revealed incalculable depths
beyond.

The Princess Hermonthis, still holding my hand, greeted graciously the
mummies of her acquaintance.

My eyes gradually became accustomed to the shadowy twilight, and I began
to distinguish the objects around me.

I saw, seated upon their thrones, the kings of the subterranean races.
They were dignified old personages, or dried up, shriveled,
wrinkled-like parchment, and blackened with naphtha and bitumen. On
their heads they wore pschents of gold, and their breastplates and
gorgets scintillated with precious stones; their eyes had the fixedness
of the sphinx, and their long beards were whitened by the snows of
centuries. Behind them stood their embalmed subjects, in the rigid and
constrained postures of Egyptian art, preserving eternally the attitudes
prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind the subjects, the cats, ibixes,
and crocodiles contemporary with them, rendered still more monstrous by
their wrappings, mewed, beat their wings, and opened and closed their
huge jaws in foolish grimaces.

All the Pharaohs were there--Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostri,
Amenoteph, all the dark-skinned rulers of the country of the pyramids,
and the royal sepulchers; on a still higher platform sat enthroned the
kings Chronos, and Xixouthros, who were contemporary with the deluge,
and Tubal-Cain, who preceded it.

The beard of King Xixouthros had grown to such lengths that it had
already wound itself seven times around the granite table against which
he leaned, lost in reverie, as though in slumber.

Further in the distance, through a dim exhalation, across the mists of
eternities, I beheld vaguely the seventy-two pre-Adamite kings, with
their seventy-two peoples, vanished forever.

The Princess Hermonthis, after allowing me a few moments to enjoy this
dizzying spectacle, presented me to Pharaoh, her father, who nodded to
me in a most majestic manner.

"I have found my foot--I have found my foot!" cried the Princess,
clapping her little hands, with every indication of uncontrollable joy.
"It was this gentleman who returned it to me."

The races of Kheme, the races of Nahasi, all the races, black, bronze,
and copper-colored, repeated in a chorus:

"The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot."

Xixouthros himself was deeply affec