ting
still the corner of his rags to stifle the mad laughter of thirty-three
centuries.

The Bedouin is now returned, breathless from his journey. He urges us
to come to see the king before the electric light is again extinguished,
and this time for good and all. Behold us now at the end of the hall, on
the edge of a dark crypt, leaning over and peering within. It is a place
oval in form, with a vault of a funereal black, relieved by frescoes,
either white or of the colour of ashes. They represent, these frescoes,
a whole new register of gods and demons, some slim and sheathed narrowly
like mummies, others with big heads and big bellies like hippopotami.
Placed on the ground and watched from above by all these figures is an
enormous sarcophagus of stone, wide open; and in it we can distinguish
vaguely the outline of a human body: the Pharaoh!

At least we should have liked to see him better. The necessary light is
forthcoming at once: the Bedouin Grand Master of Ceremonies touches an
electric button and a powerful lamp illumines the face of Amenophis,
detailing with a clearness that almost frightens you the closed
eyes, the grimacing countenance, and the whole of the sad mummy. This
theatrical effect took us by surprise; we were not prepared for it.

He was buried in magnificence, but the pillagers have stripped him of
everything, even of his beautiful breastplate of tortoiseshell, which
came to him from a far-off Oriental country, and for many centuries
now he has slept half naked on his rags. But his poor bouquet is there
still--of mimosa, recognisable even now, and who will ever tell what
pious or perhaps amorous hand it was that gathered these flowers for him
more than three thousand years ago.

The heat is suffocating. The whole crushing mass of this mountain, of
this block of limestone, into which we have crawled through relatively
imperceptible holes, like white ants or larvae, seems to weigh upon our
chest. And these figures too, inscribed on every side, and this mystery
of the hieroglyphs and the symbols, cause a growing uneasiness. You are
too near them, they seem too much the masters of the exits, these gods
with their heads of falcon, ibis and jackal, who, on the walls, converse
in a continual exalted pantomime. And then the feeling comes over
you, that you are guilty of sacrilege standing there, before this open
coffin, in this unwonted insolent light. The dolorous, blackish face,
half eaten away, seems