I was still dazzled by these many marvels when the purple hangings were raised and Miss Morgan appeared in a white _peignoir_ trimmed with swans-down. She was followed by two great, long-muzzled boarhounds. “I was sure you would come, Monsieur Pigeonneau.” I stammered a compliment. “How could one possibly refuse anything to so charming a lady?” “O, it is not because I am pretty that I am never refused anything. I have secrets by which I make myself obeyed.” Then, pointing to the old lady who was reading the Bible, she said to me: “Pay no attention to her, that is mama. I shall not introduce you. Should you speak she could not reply; she belongs to a religious sect which forbids unnecessary conversation. It is the very latest thing in sects. Its adherents wear sackcloth and eat out of wooden basins. Mama greatly enjoys these little observances. But you can imagine that I did not ask you here to talk to you about mama. I will put on my Egyptian costume. I shan’t be long. In the meantime you might look at these little things.” And she made me sit down before a cabinet containing a mummy-case, several statuettes of the Middle Empire, a number of scarabs, and some beautiful fragments of a ritual for the burial of the dead. Left alone, I examined the papyrus with the more interest, inasmuch as it was inscribed with a name I had already discovered on a seal. It was the name of a scribe of King Seti I. I immediately applied myself to noting the various interesting peculiarities the document exhibited. I was plunged in this occupation for a longer time than I could accurately measure, when I was warned by a kind of instinct that some one was behind me. I turned and saw a marvellous being, her head surmounted by a gold hawk and the pure and adorable lines of her young body revealed by a clinging white sheath. Over this a transparent rose-coloured tunic, bound at the waist by a girdle of precious stones, fell and separated into symmetrical folds. Arms and feet were bare and loaded with rings. She stood before me, her head turned towards her right shoulder in a hieratic attitude which gave to her delicious beauty something indescribably divine. “What! Is that you, Miss Morgan?” “Unless it is Neferu-Ra in person. You remember the Neferu-Ra of Leconte de Lisle, the Beauty of the Sun?” “‘Pallid and pining on her virgin bed, Swathed in fine lawns from dainty foot to head.’{*} * “Voici qu’elle languit sur son lit virginal, Très pâle, enveloppée avec des fines toiles.” “But of course you don’t know. You know nothing of verse. And yet verses are so pretty. Come! Let’s go to work.”