ur boat,
where you will, at your leisure, decipher this historic document and
read the riddle set by these hawks, scarabaei, kneeling figures, serrated
lines, winged uraeus, and spatula hands, which you read as readily as did
the great Champollion."

The fellahs, under the orders of Argyropoulos, carried off the huge
coffer on their shoulders, and the mummy, performing in an inverse
direction the funeral travel it had accomplished in the days of Moses,
in a painted and gilded bari preceded by a long procession, was embarked
upon the sandal which had brought the travellers, soon reached the
vessel moored on the Nile, and was placed in the cabin, which was not
unlike, so little do forms change in Egypt, the shrine of the funeral
boat.

Argyropoulos, having arranged about the box all the objects which had
been found near it, stood respectfully at the cabin door and appeared to
be waiting. Lord Evandale understood, and ordered his valet to pay him
the twenty-five thousand francs.

The open bier was placed upon rests in the centre of the cabin; it shone
as brilliantly as if the colours had been put on the day before, and
framed in the mummy, moulded within its cartonnage, the workmanship of
which was remarkably fine and rich. Never had ancient Egypt more
carefully wrapped up one of her children for the eternal sleep. Although
no shape was indicated by the funeral Hermes, ending in a sheath from
which stood out alone the shoulders and the head, one could guess there
was under that thick envelope a young and graceful form. The gilded
mask, with its long eyes outlined with black and brightened with enamel,
the nose with its delicate nostrils, the rounded cheek-bones, the
half-open lips smiling with an indescribable, sphinx-like smile, the
chin somewhat short in curve but of extreme beauty of contour, presented
the purest type of the Egyptian ideal, and testified by a thousand
small, characteristic details which art cannot invent, to the individual
character of the portrait. Numberless fine plaits of hair, tressed with
cords and separated by bandeaux, fell in opulent masses on either side
of the face. A lotus stem, springing from the back of the neck, bowed
over the head and opened its azure calyx over the dead, cold brow,
completing with a funeral cone this rich and elegant head-dress.

A broad necklace, composed of fine enamels cloisonnes with gold and
formed of several rows, lay upon the lower portion of the neck, and
al