[7] Two sous per livre from the tenth of the revenue.
[8] This does not refer to the present theatre, built by Louis XV,
or rather by Madame de Pompadour, but only completed in 1769 and
inaugurated in 1770, for the marriage of the Duc de Berri (Louis XVI)
with Marie Antoinette. The “hall” in question was a sort of portable
theatre, that was moved into this or that gallery or apartment, after
the manner in vogue in the days of Louis XIV.
[9] Madame d’Estrades not long after was disgraced, together with M.
d’Argenson, for having conspired, this time seriously, against Madame
de Pompadour.
THE MUMMY’S FOOT
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
[Illustration]
_Théophile Gautier, great colorist and globe-trotter, was
born at Tarbes, in 1811, and died at Neuilly in 1872. He
began life as a painter, then turned to poetry, and finally
adopted prose for the expression of his ideas, writing some
three hundred volumes in all of poetry, romances, parodies,
critiques, histories, tales, etc._
_After being presented to Victor Hugo, he became an
enthusiastic apostle of Romanticism. He lived in an atmosphere
of Oriental splendor noticeable in “The Mummy’s Foot.” His
style is unusually rich and sensuous, with a refined fancy
finely chiseled. He has exerted a considerable influence on the
present generation of writers._
_Though Gautier has expressed few original ideas and few
opinions, and is discursive, he is, as his friend Baudelaire
said of him, “an unimpeachable poet, a finished magician in
French letters.”_
[Illustration]
THE MUMMY’S FOOT
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Translated by Lafcadio Hearn.
I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those
curiosity-venders, who are called _marchands de bric-à-brac_
in that Parisian _argot_ which is so perfectly unintelligible
elsewhere in France.
You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of
these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable
to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he
must have his _chambre au moyen âge_.
There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer
in old iron, the wareroom of the tapestry-maker, the laboratory of
the chemist, and the studio of the painter--in all those gloomy dens
where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters the
most manifestly ancient thing is dust;--the cobwebs are more authentic
than the guimpe laces; and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition
is actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from
America.
The warehouse of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum;
all ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there;
an Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony
panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the
court of Louis XV nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a
massive table of the time of Louis XIII, with heavy spiral supports of
oak, and carven designs of Chimeras and foliage intermingled.
Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense
Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching;
side by side with enameled works by Bernard Palissy, representing
serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.
From disemboweled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese
silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with
luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less
tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.
The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor
glittered in one corner; Loves and Nymphs of porcelain; Chinese
grotesques, vases of _célandon_ and crackle-ware; Saxon and old
Sèvres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.
The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived
between the piles of furniture; warding off with his hand the hazardous
sweep of my coat-skirts; watching my elbows with the uneasy attention
of an antiquarian and a usurer.
It was a singular face, that of the merchant--an immense skull,
polished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair,
which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more
strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal _bonhomie_,
counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes
which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d’or upon quicksilver.
The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested
the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands--thin, slender, full of nerves
which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and
armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats’ wings--shook
with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became
firmer than steel pincers or lobsters’ claws when they lifted any
precious article--an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian
crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical
and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of
his face three centuries ago.
“Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese
with a blade undulating like flame: look at those grooves contrived
for the blood to run along, those teeth set backward so as to tear
out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon--it is a fine character of
ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection: this two-handed
sword is very beautiful--it is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this
_colichemarde_, with its fenestrated guard--what a superb specimen
of handicraft!”
“No; I have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage;--I want a
small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight; for I can
not endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which
may be found on everybody’s desk.”
The old gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged
before me some antique bronzes--so-called, at least; fragments of
malachite; little Hindu or Chinese idols--a kind of poussah-toys in
jade-stone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnu, and
wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers
and letters in place.
I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon, all constellated with
warts--its mouth formidable with bristling tusks and ranges of
teeth--and an abominable little Mexican fetish, representing the god
Vitziliputzli _au naturel_; when I caught sight of a charming
foot, which I at first took for a fragment of some antique Venus.
It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine
bronze that warm, living look so much preferable to the gray-green
aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in
a state of putrefaction: satiny gleams played over its rounded forms,
doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries; for it
seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art--perhaps
molded by Lysippus himself.
“That foot will be my choice,” I said to the merchant, who regarded me
with an ironical and saturnine air, and held out the object desired
that I might examine it more fully.
I was surprised at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but in
sooth a foot of flesh--an embalmed foot--a mummy’s foot: on examining
it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost
imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages,
became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminated
by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great
toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in
the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it an
aerial lightness--the grace of a bird’s foot;--the sole, scarcely
streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence
that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact
with the finest matting of Nile rushes, and the softest carpets of
panther skin.
“Ha, ha!--you want the foot of the Princess Hermonthis”--exclaimed the
merchant, with a strange giggle, fixing his owlish eyes upon me--“ha,
ha, ha!--for a paper-weight!--an original idea!--artistic idea! Old
Pharaoh would certainly have been surprised had some one told him
that the foot of his adored daughter would be used for a paper-weight
after he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out as a receptacle
for the triple coffin, painted and gilded--covered with hieroglyphics
and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls”--continued the queer
little merchant, half audibly, as though talking to himself!
“How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?”
“Ah, the highest price I can get; for it is a superb piece: if I had
the match of it you could not have it for less than five hundred
francs;--the daughter of a Pharaoh! nothing is more rare.”
“Assuredly that is not a common article; but, still, how much do you
want? In the first place, let me warn you that all my wealth consists
of just five louis: I can buy anything that costs five louis, but
nothing dearer;--you might search my vest pockets and most secret
drawers without even finding one poor five-franc piece more.”
“Five louis for the foot of the Princess Hermonthis! that is very
little, very little indeed; ’tis an authentic foot,” muttered the
merchant, shaking his head, and imparting a peculiar rotary motion to
his eyes. “Well, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the
bargain,” he added, wrapping the foot in an ancient damask rag--“very
fine! real damask!--Indian damask which has never been redyed; it is
strong, and yet it is soft,” he mumbled, stroking the frayed tissue
with his fingers, through the trade-acquired habit which moved him to
praise even an object of so little value that he himself deemed it only
worth the giving away.
He poured the gold coins into a sort of medieval alms-purse hanging at
his belt, repeating:
“The foot of the Princess Hermonthis, to be used for a paper-weight!”
Then turning his phosphorescent eyes upon me, he exclaimed in a voice
strident as the crying of a cat which has swallowed a fish-bone:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased: he loved his daughter--the dear
man!”
“You speak as if you were a contemporary of his: you are old enough,
goodness knows! but you do not date back to the Pyramids of Egypt,” I
answered, laughingly, from the threshold.