The expense and care required for the embalming of princes must have been immense, as may be conjectured by the following fact. A portion of mummy preserved in the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, merits all the eulogiums that could be given to an object of this kind. It consists of the foot, leg, and thigh of an infant two or three years old; the care with which this embalming was made, was known to those who presented it to the cabinet, for they had written upon the box which contained this precious relic of the art, _mummy of the little prince of Memphis_. This denomination has no other foundation, perhaps, than the nature of the work, and the sensible difference observed between this and other mummies. The surface of the flesh is black, and so smooth that it may be compared to a fine Chinese varnish; the flesh has not altogether preserved its softness, but all the thickness and plumpness peculiar to little children can be distinguished, as well as the articulations and all the little wrinkles of the fingers. The nails are perfectly preserved and well set on; they have neither colour nor gilding, although they appear to have been gilded. The bandages do not appear to have been imbued with the same bitumens used for other mummies; the colour which they have acquired by the dried balsamic materials, as might be anticipated, resembles that of canella, although the odour, which is agreeable, has no analogy to that aromatic. The bandages are fine, detached, and proportioned to the body which they cover; they are arranged with the greatest care and repeated a great number of times. Besides, the thigh bone, of which there is about four fingers breadth uncovered, has suffered very little alteration in its colour, nothing more than what the air alone might produce. Rouelle, with whom M. de Caylus visited this mummy, remarked, on piercing with a pin the sole of this foot, that the skin resembled stretched parchment, and was empty beneath--all of which proves a richer and more extensive preparation destined for princes. We may add to this conjecture, that the cases of touchstone, or of basalt, always expensive on account of their hardness, cases so rare that only three or four have been found, may be supposed to have been made only for princes, and even the more eminent of those. We have not hesitated to include in this work the preceding observations, because they appeared to us necessary to rectify or complete the facts advanced by Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, Plutarch, Porphyrus, and many others. But the whole of these materials have need of new lights, drawn from researches made upon the spot. The scientific commission of Egypt felt the necessity of this, and several of its members applied themselves to personal examinations of the pyramids and caverns; and one of them, M. Rouyer, in his memoir on Egyptian embalming, traces us a history nearly complete. The following are the most interesting details: