ted.

He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his moustache, and regarded me with
his glance charged with the centuries.

"By Oms, the dog of Hell, and by Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth,
here is a brave and worthy young man," said Pharaoh, extending toward me
his scepter which terminated in a lotus flower. "What recompense do you
desire?"

Eagerly, with that audacity which one has in dreams, where nothing seems
impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis. Her
hand in exchange for her foot, seemed to me an antithetical recompense,
in sufficiently good taste.

Pharaoh opened wide his eyes of glass, surprised at my pleasantry, as
well as my request.

"From what country are you, 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!" exclaimed in a chorus all the
thrones, and all the circles of nations.

Hermonthis alone did not seem to think my request improper.

"If you were even two thousand years old," continued the old king, "I
would gladly bestow upon you the Princess; but the disproportion is too
great; besides, our daughters must have husbands who will last, and you
no longer know how to preserve yourselves. Of the last persons who were
brought here, scarcely fifteen centuries ago, nothing now remains but a
pinch of ashes. Look! my flesh is as hard as basalt, my bones are bars
of steel. I shall be present on the last day, with the body and features
I had in life. My daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of
bronze. But at that time the winds will have dissipated the last grains
of your dust, and Isis herself, who knew how to recover the fragments of
Osiris, would hardly be able to recompose your being. See how vigorous I
still am, and how powerful is the strength of my arm," said he, shaking
my hand in the English fashion, in a way that cut my fingers with my
rings.

His grasp was so strong that I awoke, and discovered my friend Alfred,
who was pulling me by the arm, and shaking me, to make me get up.

"Oh, see here, you maddening sleeper! Must I have you dragged into the
middle of the street, and have fireworks put off close to your ear, in
order to waken you? It is afternoon. Don't you remember that you
promised to call for me and take me to see the Spanish pictures of M.
Aguada?"

"Good heavens! I forgot all about it,"