se he did not wear his beard in ringlets, and had not
an enamelled neck-plate and a narrow vestment wrinkling in folds upon
his hips,--the only suitable dress in which to be presented to a royal
mummy. A sort of religious horror filled him, although there was nothing
sinister about the place, as he violated this palace of death so
carefully protected against profanation. His attempt seemed to him
impious and sacrilegious, and he said to himself, "Suppose this Pharaoh
were to rise on his couch and strike me with his sceptre." For one
moment he thought of letting fall the shroud half lifted from the body
of this antique, dead civilisation, but the doctor, carried away by
scientific enthusiasm, and not a prey to such thoughts, shouted in a
loud voice, "My lord, my lord, the sarcophagus is intact!"

These words recalled Lord Evandale to reality. By swift projection of
his thought he traversed the thirty-five hundred years which he had gone
back in his reverie, and he answered, "Indeed, dear doctor, intact?"

"Oh, unexpected luck! oh, marvellous chance! oh, wondrous find!"
continued the doctor, in the excitement of a scholarly joy.

Argyropoulos, on beholding the doctor's enthusiasm, felt a pang of
remorse,--the only kind of remorse that he could feel,--at not having
asked more than twenty-five thousand francs. "I was a fool!" he said to
himself. "This shall not happen again. That nobleman has robbed me."

In order to enable the strangers to enjoy the beauty of the spectacle,
the fellahs had lighted all their torches. The sight was indeed strange
and magnificent. The galleries and halls which led to the sarcophagus
hall were flat-ceiled and not more than eight or ten feet high; but the
sanctuary, the one to which all these labyrinths led, was of much
greater proportions. Lord Evandale and Dr. Rumphius remained dumb with
admiration, although they were already familiar with the funereal
splendours of Egyptian art. Thus lighted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and
for the first time, perhaps, the colours of the paintings shone in all
their brilliancy. Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity,
brilliantly fresh and amazingly clear, stood out from the golden
background of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before
the subjects which they formed could be discerned. At first glance it
looked like a vast tapestry of the richest stuffs. The vault, some
thirty feet high, formed a sort of azure velarium bordered wi