“This foot will be the thing for me,” said I to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and saturnine air as he held out the desired object for me to examine at will. I was surprised at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but indeed a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a foot of a mummy; on examining it still more closely one could see the grain of the skin, and the lines almost imperceptibly impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages. The toes were slender, delicate, terminated by perfect nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great toe, slightly separate, and contrasting happily with the modelling of the other toes, in the antique style, gave it an air of lightness, the grace of a bird’s foot; the sole, scarcely streaked by several almost invisible grooves, showed that it had never touched the earth, and had come in contact with only the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets of panther skin. “Ha, ha! You wish the foot of the Princess Hermonthis!” exclaimed the merchant, with a strange chuckle, fixing upon me his owlish eyes. “Ha, ha, ha!--for a paper-weight! Original idea! Artistic idea! If any one would have said to old Pharaoh that the foot of his adored daughter would serve for a paper-weight, he would have been greatly surprised, considering that he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out to hold the triple coffin, painted and gilded and all covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,” continued the singular little merchant, half aloud, and as though talking to himself. “How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?” “Ah, the highest price I am able, for it is a superb piece: if I had its counterpart, you could not have it for less than five hundred francs; the daughter of a Pharaoh, nothing is more rare!” “Assuredly it is not common; but still, how much do you want? In the first place, let me tell you something, and that is, my entire treasure consists of only five louis: I can buy anything that costs five louis, but nothing dearer. You might search my innermost waistcoat pockets, and my most secret desk-drawers, without finding even one miserable five-franc piece more.” “Five louis for the foot of the Princess Hermonthis! That is very little, very little, in truth, for an authentic foot,” muttered the merchant, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “All right, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the bargain,” he added, wrapping it in an ancient damask rag. “Very fine: real damask, Indian damask, which has never been redyed; it is strong, it is soft,” he mumbled, passing his fingers over the frayed tissue, from the commercial habit which moved him to praise an object of so little value that he himself judged it worth only being given away. He poured the gold pieces into a sort of mediæval alms-purse hanging at his belt, as he kept on saying: “The foot of the Princess Hermonthis to serve as a paper-weight!”