"Moreover," now declared another mummy (this was a Moor, called
P.E.M., or the Peach,[5] who through some oversight had not been
embalmed, but only pickled in vinegar, to the detriment of his
disposition),--"moreover, I am not at all in sympathy with any protest
whatever against the scavenger, for it might be taken as an excuse for
what they are pleased to call art."

[Footnote 5: Codman annotates this: "Synonyms, since P.E.M. is
obviously _Persicum Esculentum Malum_--that is, the peach; 'which,'
says Macrobius, 'although it rather belongs to the tribe of apples,
Sævius reckons as a species of nut.'"]

All groaned at this abominable word. And then another lackey cried,
"You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-littérateur!" and all the
mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee":
and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we
never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness.

But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts
in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a
mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil,
appeared quite honestly to believe that all literature came out of
the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic
sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary
criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something
to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not
know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the
garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to
regard the old fellow half seriously.