Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two pre-Adamite Kings, with their seventy- two peoples—forever passed away.

After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who favored me with a most gracious nod.

“I have found my foot again!—I have found my foot!” cried the Princess, clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy: “it was this gentleman who restored it to me.”

The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi—all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:

“The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!”

Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.

He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his mustache with his fingers, and turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.

“By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth! this is a brave and worthy lad!” exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with his scepter, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.

“What recompense do you desire?”

Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;—the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.

Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty request.

“What country do you come from? 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!” cried out at once all the Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.

Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.

“If you were even only two thousand years old,” replied the ancient King, “I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer; even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust;—behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are bars of steel!

“I shall be present on the last day of the world, with the same body and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.

“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.

“See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,” he added, shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my rings in the flesh of my fingers.

He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking me by the arm to make me get up.