With the idea of putting it to profitable use as soon as possible,
I placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of
papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable
mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and
posted in the table drawer instead of the letter-box--an error to which
absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming,
bizarre, and romantic.
Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity
and pride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage
over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the
Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.
I looked upon all who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so
authentically Egyptian, as very ridiculous people; and it seemed to me
that the proper occupation of every sensible man should consist in the
mere fact of having a mummy’s foot upon his desk.
Happily I met some friends, whose presence distracted me in my
infatuation with this new acquisition: I went to dinner with them; for
I could not very well have dined with myself.
When I came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a
few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately
titillated my olfactory nerves: the heat of the room had warmed the
natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the _paraschistes_, who cut
open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess;--it
was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating--a perfume that four
thousand years had not been able to dissipate.
The Dream of Egypt was Eternity: her odors have the solidity of
granite, and endure as long.
I soon drank deeply from the black cup of sleep: for a few hours all
remained opaque to me; Oblivion and Nothingness inundated me with their
sombre waves.
Yet light gradually dawned upon the darkness of my mind: dreams
commenced to touch me softly in their silent flight.
The eyes of my soul were opened; and I beheld my chamber as it actually
was: I might have believed myself awake, but for a vague consciousness
which assured me that I slept, and that something fantastic was about
to take place.
The odor of the myrrh had augmented in intensity: and I felt a slight
headache, which I very naturally attributed to several glasses of
champagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods and our future fortunes.
I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which I saw
nothing to justify: every article of furniture was in its proper place;
the lamp, softly shaded by its globe of ground crystal, burned upon its
bracket; the water-color sketches shone under their Bohemian glass;
the curtains hung down languidly; everything wore an aspect of tranquil
slumber.
After a few moments, however, all this calm interior appeared to
become disturbed; the woodwork cracked stealthily; the ash-covered log
suddenly emitted a jet of blue flame; and the disks of the pateras
seemed like great metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things
which were about to happen.
My eyes accidentally fell upon the desk where I had placed the foot of
the Princess Hermonthis.
Instead of remaining quiet--as behooved a foot which had been
embalmed for four thousand years--it commenced to act in a nervous
manner; contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled
frog;--one would have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into
contact with a galvanic battery: I could distinctly hear the dry sound
made by its little heel, hard as the hoof of a gazel.
I became rather discontented with my acquisition, inasmuch as I wished
my paper-weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and thought it very
unnatural that feet should walk about without legs; and I commenced to
experience a feeling closely akin to fear.
Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir; and heard a bumping
sound, like that caused by some person hopping on one foot across the
floor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold; that I felt a
strange wind chill my back; and that my suddenly-rising hair caused my
nightcap to execute a leap of several yards.
The bed-curtains opened, and I beheld the strangest figure imaginable
before me.
It was a young girl of a very deep coffee-brown complexion, like the
bayadere Amani, and possessing the purest Egyptian type of perfect
beauty; her eyes were almond-shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so black
that they seemed blue; her nose was exquisitely chiseled, almost Greek
in its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a
Corinthian statue of bronze, but for the prominence of her cheekbones
and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to
recognize her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race
which dwelt upon the banks of the Nile.
Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped, like those of very young girls,
were encircled by a peculiar kind of metal bands, and bracelets of
glass beads; her hair was all twisted into little cords; and she wore
upon her bosom a little idol figure of green paste, bearing a whip
with seven lashes, which proved it to be an image of Isis: her brow
was adorned with a shining plate of gold; and a few traces of paint
relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks.
As for her costume, it was very odd indeed.
Fancy a _pagne_ or skirt all formed of little strips of material
bedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and
apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.
In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard
the hoarse falsetto of the _bric-à-brac_ dealer, repeating like
a monotonous refrain, the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so
enigmatical an intonation:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased: he loved his daughter, the dear
man!”
One strange circumstance, which was not at all calculated to restore
my equanimity, was that the apparition had but one foot; the other was
broken off at the ankle!
She approached the table where the foot was starting and fidgeting
about more than ever; and there supported herself upon the edge of the
desk. I saw her eyes fill with pearly-gleaming tears.
Although she had not as yet spoken, I fully comprehended the thoughts
which agitated her: she looked at her foot--for it was indeed her
own--with an exquisitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but
the foot leaped and ran hither and thither, as though impelled on steel
springs.
Twice or thrice she extended her hand to seize it, but could not
succeed.
Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot--which
appeared to be endowed with a special life of its own--a very fantastic
dialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been
spoken thirty centuries ago in the syrinxes of the land of Ser: luckily
I understood Coptic perfectly well that night.
The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as the
tones of a crystal bell:
“Well, my dear little foot, you always flee from me; yet I always
took good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl
of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with palm
oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a
hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select _tatbebs_ for you,
painted and embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy
of all the young girls in Egypt: you wore on your great toe rings
bearing the device of the sacred Scarabæus; and you supported one of
the lightest bodies that a lazy foot could sustain.”
The foot replied in a pouting and chagrined tone:
“You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have been
bought and paid for: the old merchant knew what he was about: he bore
you a grudge for having refused to espouse him. This is an ill turn
which he has done you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in the
subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him:
he desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of the
shadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for
my ransom?”
“Alas, no!--my jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, were all
stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sob.
“Princess,” I then exclaimed, “I never retained anybody’s foot
unjustly;--even though you have not got the five louis which it cost
me, I present it to you gladly: I should feel unutterably wretched to
think that I were the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess
Hermonthis being lame.”
I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which
must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.
She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me; and her eyes shone with
bluish gleams of light.
She took her foot--which surrendered itself willingly this time--like a
woman about to put on her little shoe; and adjusted it to her leg with
much skill.
This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to
assure herself that she was really no longer lame.
“Ah, how pleased my father will be!--he who was so unhappy because of
my mutilation; and who from the moment of my birth, set a whole nation
at work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me
intact until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance
of Amenthi! Come with me to my father;--he will receive you kindly; for
you have given me back my foot.”
I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a
dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic
aspect; hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers; and informed the
Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.
Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of green
paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the
table.
“It is only fair,” she observed, smilingly, “that I should replace your
paper-weight.”
She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a
serpent; and we departed.
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid
and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly
by us, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance: pylons
and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined
against the horizon.
We had reached our destination.
The princess conducted me to a mountain of rose-colored granite, in the
face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have
been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not
its location been marked by two stelæ wrought with sculptures.
Hermonthis kindled a torch, and led the way before me.
We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock: their walls,
covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions,
might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in
their formation;--these corridors, of interminable length, opened into
square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through
which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways;--these pits
again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors,
likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in
circles, the symbols of the _tau_ and _pedum_--prodigious
works of art which no living eye can ever examine--interminable
legends of granite which only the dead have time to read through all
eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so
immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits; files of
monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between
which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame;--points of light which
revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the
mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight; and objects became
discernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones--grand
old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened
with naphtha and bitumen--all wearing _pshents_ of gold, and
breast-plates and gorgets glittering with precious stones; their eyes
immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards
whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples,
in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all
eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code.
Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles cotemporary with
them--rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands--mewed,
flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.
All the Pharaohs were there--Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus,
Sesostris, Amenotaph--all the dark rulers of the pyramids and
syrinxes:--on yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros--who was
contemporary with the deluge; and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite
table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie--and buried in dreams.
Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two
Preadamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples--forever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few
moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh,
who favored me with a most gracious nod.
“I have found my foot again!--I have found my foot!” cried the
princess, clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic
joy: “it was this gentleman who restored it to me.”
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi--all the black, bronzed, and
copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:
“The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!”
Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.
He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his mustache with his fingers, and
turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.
“By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth!
this is a brave and worthy lad!” exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with
his sceptre which was terminated with a lotus-flower.
“What recompense do you desire?”
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems
impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;--the
hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty
request.
“What country do you come from? 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!”--cried out at once all the
Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.
Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.
“If you were even only two thousand years old,” replied the ancient
King, “I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion
is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who
will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer;
even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than
a handful of dust;--behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are
bars of steel!
“I will be present on the last day of the world, with the same body
and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter
Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.
“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad
by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of
Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.
“See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,” he added,
shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my
rings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking
me by the arm to make me get up.
“O you everlasting sleeper!--must I have you carried out into the
middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is after
noon; don’t you recollect your promise to take me with you to see M.
Aguado’s Spanish pictures?”
“God! I forgot all, all about it,” I answered, dressing myself
hurriedly; “we will go there at once; I have the permit lying there on
my desk.”
I started to find it;--but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead
of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, the little
green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
CIRCÉ
BY OCTAVE FEUILLET
[Illustration]
_As a writer of romance, Octave Feuillet holds an absolutely
unique place. For thirty years he was the sole representative
of that delicate, high-minded school of writing which owes to
him, and to him alone, its rescue from the realistic deluge._
_He wrote “The Romance of a Poor Young Man” “Julie de
Trécœur,” and a host of those exquisite “proverbes,” like
“Circé,” that delighted with their delicacy of observation, the
grace and spirit of their style; and yet Feuillet has a most
exacting realism of his own, suave, urbane._
_Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lô in 1821. His life was
beautifully simple, coherent, and filled with work. He wrote
many admirable plays, “Montjoye,” “Dalila,” and others, and a
sketch, “Le Curé de Bourron,” almost perfect in its art, drawn
from his own observation as librarian at Fontainebleau. In 1862
he was elected to the Academy and in 1890 he died at Paris._
[Illustration]