said Doctor Ponnonner at this point, laying his
hand gently upon the arm of the Egyptian--"I beg your pardon, sir, but
may I presume to interrupt you for one moment?"

"By all means, sir," replied the Count, drawing up.

"I merely wished to ask you a question," said the Doctor. "You mentioned
the historian's personal correction of traditions respecting his own
epoch. Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were
usually found to be right?"

"The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered
to be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written
histories themselves;--that is to say, not one individual iota of either
was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and radically
wrong."

"But since it is quite clear," resumed the Doctor, "that at least five
thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, I take it for
granted that your histories at that period, if not your traditions
were sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the
Creation, which took place, as I presume you are aware, only about ten
centuries before."

"Sir!" said the Count Allamistakeo.

The Doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional
explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. The
latter at length said, hesitatingly:

"The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel.
During my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy
as that the universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had
a beginning at all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something
remotely hinted, by a man of many speculations, concerning the origin
_of the human race;_ and by this individual, the very word _Adam_
(or Red Earth), which you make use of, was employed. He employed
it, however, in a generical sense, with reference to the spontaneous
germination from rank soil (just as a thousand of the lower genera of
creatures are germinated)--the spontaneous germination, I say, of five
vast hordes of men, simultaneously upspringing in five distinct and
nearly equal divisions of the globe."

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or
two of us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk
Buckingham, first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the
sinciput of Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

"The long duration of human life in your time, together with
the o