“The Princess Hermonthis has recovered her foot!” Even Xixouthros was visibly affected: he raised his dull eyelids, passed his fingers over his mustache, and bent upon me his look weighty with centuries. “By Oms, the dog of Hell, and by Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth, there is a brave and worthy fellow!” exclaimed Pharaoh, extending toward me his sceptre, terminated with a lotus-flower. “What do you desire for recompense?” Strong in that audacity which is inspired by dreams, where nothing seems impossible, I asked the hand of Hermonthis: the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for such a good foot. Pharaoh opened wide his eyes of glass, astonished by my pleasantry and my request. “From what country do you come, and what is your age?” “I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh.” “Twenty-seven years old--and he wishes to espouse the Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!” exclaimed at once all the thrones and all the circles of nations. Hermonthis alone did not seem to find my request unreasonable. “If only you were even two thousand years old,” replied the ancient King, “I would quite willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who are durable--you no longer know how to preserve yourselves: the oldest people that you can produce are scarcely fifteen hundred years old, and they are no more than a pinch of dust. See here--my flesh is hard as basalt, my bones are bars of steel! “I shall be present on the last day of the world with the body and the features which were mine in life; my daughter Hermonthis will endure longer than a statue of bronze. “Then the winds will have dispersed the last particles of your dust, and Isis herself, who was able to recover the atoms of Osiris, would be embarrassed to recompose your being. “See how vigorous I still am, and how well my hands can grip,” he said to me as he shook my hand _à l’Anglaise_, in a manner that cut my fingers with my rings. He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found it was my friend Alfred who was shaking me by the arm to make me get up. “Ah, you maddening sleepyhead! Must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It’s afternoon; don’t you remember that you promised to take me with you to see M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?” “_Mon Dieu!_ I didn’t remember it any more!” I answered as I dressed myself. “We will go there at once; I have the permit here on my desk.” I went forward to take it; but judge of my astonishment when instead of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, I saw the tiny figurine of green paste left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis! FOOTNOTES: [1] An East-Indian dancing girl. ANATOLE FRANCE, FORMER MAN AND NEW