ile, let us
strip, as delicately as possible, this young beauty who is more than
three thousand years of age."

"Poor woman!" murmured the young lord. "Profane eyes will now behold the
mysterious charms which love itself perhaps never saw. Truly, under the
empty pretext of scientific pursuit, we are as barbarous as the Persians
of Cambyses, and if I were not afraid of driving to despair this worthy
scholar, I should enclose you again, without having stripped off your
last veil, within the triple box of your bier."

Dr. Rumphius raised from the casing the mummy, which was no heavier than
a child's body, and began to unwrap it with motherly skill and lightness
of touch. He first of all undid the outer envelope of linen, sewed
together and impregnated with palm wine, and the broad bands which here
and there girdled the body. Then he took hold of the end of a thin,
narrow band, the infinite windings of which enclosed the limbs of the
young Egyptian. He rolled up the band on itself as cleverly as the most
skilful embalmer of the City of the Dead, following it up in all its
meanderings and circumvolutions. As he progressed in his work, the
mummy, freed from its envelope, like a statue which a sculptor blocks
out of the marble, appeared more slender and exquisite in form. The
bandage having been unrolled, another narrower one was seen, intended to
bind the body more closely. It was of such fine linen, and so finely
woven, that it was comparable to modern cambric and muslin. This bandage
followed accurately every outline, imprisoning the fingers and the toes,
moulding like a mask the features of the face, which was visible through
the thin tissue. The aromatic balm in which it had been steeped had
stiffened it, and as it came away under the fingers of the doctor, it
gave out a little dry sound like that of paper that is being crushed or
torn. There remained but one turn to be taken off, and familiar though
he was with such work, Dr. Rumphius stopped for a moment, either
through respect for the dead, or through that feeling which prevents a
man from breaking open a letter, from opening a door, from raising a
veil which hides a secret that he burns to learn. He ascribed his
momentary pause to fatigue, and as a matter of fact, the perspiration
was dripping from his forehead without his thinking of wiping it with
his great blue-checked handkerchief; but fatigue had nothing to do with
it. Meanwhile the dead form showed through the