rt by your lovely arm surely contains it. And I shall
be covered with glory, become the equal of Champollion, and make Lepsius
die of jealousy."

The nobleman and the doctor returned to Europe. The mummy, wrapped up
again in all its bandages and replaced within its three cases, rests
within Lord Evandale's park in Lincolnshire, in the basalt sarcophagus
which he brought at great expense from Biban el Moluk and which he did
not give to the British Museum. Sometimes Lord Evandale leans upon the
sarcophagus, sinks into a deep reverie, and sighs.

After three years of unflagging application, Dr. Rumphius succeeded in
deciphering the mysterious papyrus, save in some damaged parts, and in
others which contained unknown signs. And it is his translation into
Latin--which we have turned into French--that you are about to read,
under the name, "The Romance of a Mummy."

_The Romance of a Mummy_

I

Oph (that is the name of the city which antiquity called Thebes of the
Hundred Gates, or Diospolis Magna), seemed asleep under the burning
beams of the blazing sun. It was noon. A white light fell from the pale
sky upon the baked earth; the sand, shimmering and scintillating, shone
like burnished metal; shadows there were none, save a narrow, bluish
line at the foot of buildings, like the inky line with which an
architect draws upon papyrus; the houses, whose walls sloped well
inwards, glowed like bricks in an oven; every door was closed, and no
one showed at the windows, which were closed with blinds of reeds.

At the end of the deserted streets and above the terraces stood out in
the hot, transparent air the tips of obelisks, the tops of pylons, the
entablatures of palaces and temples, whose capitals, formed of human
faces or lotus flowers, showed partially, breaking the horizontal lines
of the roofs and rising like reefs amid the mass of private buildings.
Here and there above a garden wall shot up the scaly trunk of a palm
tree ending in a plume of leaves, not one of which stirred, for never a
breath blew. Acacias, mimosas, and Pharaoh fig-trees formed a cascade of
foliage that cast a narrow blue shadow upon the dazzling brilliancy of
the ground. These green spots refreshed and enlivened the solemn aridity
of the picture, which but for them would have been that of a dead city.

A few slaves of the Nahasi race, black complexioned, monkey-faced, with
bestial gait, alone braving the heat of the day, were bearing t