As for her costume, it was very strange. Imagine an under-wrapping of linen strips, bedizened with black and red hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy. In one of those flights of thought so frequent in dreams, I heard the rough falsetto of the bric-à-brac dealer, which repeated like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with an intonation so enigmatical: “Old Pharaoh will not be pleased--he loved his daughter, that dear man!” Strange circumstance--and one which scarcely reassured me--the apparition had but one foot; the other was broken off at the ankle! She approached the desk where the foot was moving and wriggling with redoubled liveliness. Once there, she supported herself upon the edge, and I saw tears form and grow pearly in her eyes. Although she had not as yet spoken, I clearly discerned her thoughts: she looked at her foot--for it was indeed her own--with an infinitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but the foot leaped and coursed hither and yon, as though driven by steel springs. Two or three times she extended her hand to seize it, but she did not succeed. Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot--which appeared to be endowed with a life of its own--a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic dialect, such as might have been spoken some thirty centuries ago by voices of the land of Ser: luckily, that night I understood Coptic to perfection. The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as a crystal bell: “Well, my dear little foot, you flee from me always, though I have taken good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a basin of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with oil of palms; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select sandals for you, broidered and painted and turned up at the toes, which made all the young girls in Egypt envious; you wore on your great toe rings representing the sacred Scarabæus, and you carried about the lightest body it was possible for a lazy foot to sustain.” The foot replied, in a tone pouting and chagrined: “You well know that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have been bought and paid for. The old merchant knew perfectly what he was doing; he always bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him: this is an ill turn which he has done you. The Arab who robbed your royal sarcophagus in the subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent by him: he desired to prevent you from going to the reunion of the shadowy peoples in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?” “Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, were all stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sigh.