We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent three or four hours in the Vatican again, that wonderful world of curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes—even admiration—it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though. Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered—nonplussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure; we never showed any interest in anything. He had reserved what he considered to be his greatest wonder till the last—a royal Egyptian mummy; the best-preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to him: “See, genteelmen!—Mummy! Mummy!” The eyeglass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever. “Ah,—Ferguson—what did I understand you to say the gentleman’s name was?” “Name?—he got no name! Mummy!—’Gyptian mummy!” “Yes, yes. Born here?” “No! _’Gyptian_ mummy!” “Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?” “No!—_Not_ Frenchman, not Roman!—born in Egypta!” “Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality, likely. Mummy—mummy. How calm he is—how self-possessed. Is, ah—is he dead?” “Oh, SACRE BLEU, been dead three thousan’ year!” The doctor turned on him savagely: “Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn. Trying to impose your vile second-hand carcasses on _us_!—thunder and lightning, I’ve a notion to—to—if you’ve got a nice _fresh_ corpse, fetch him out!—or, by George, we’ll brain you!” We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this morning to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to describe us, so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He finished with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for a guide to say. There is one remark (already mentioned) which never yet has failed to disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five, ten, fifteen minutes—as long as we can hold out, in fact—and then ask: “Is—is he dead?” A SURFEIT OF ART