Egypt, lasted two hours, and after the last turn, when the illustrious
figure appeared, the emotion amongst the assistants was such that they
stampeded like a herd of cattle, and the Pharaoh was overturned. He has,
moreover, given much cause for conversation, this great Sesostris, since
his installation in the museum. Suddenly one day with a brusque gesture,
in the presence of the attendants, who fled howling with fear, he raised
that hand which is still in the air, and which he has not deigned since
to lower.[*] And subsequently there supervened, beginning in the old
yellowish-white hair, and then swarming over the whole body, a hatching
of cadaveric fauna, which necessitated a complete bath in mercury. He
also has his paper ticket, pasted on the end of his box, and one may
read there, written in a careless hand, that name which once caused the
whole world to tremble--"Ramses II. (Sesostris)"! It need not be said
that he has greatly fallen away and blackened even in the fifteen yeas
that I have known him. He is a phantom that is about to disappear; in
spite of all the care lavished upon him, a poor phantom about to fall to
pieces, to sink into nothingness. We move our lantern about his hooked
nose, the better to decipher, in the play of shadow, his expression,
that still remains authoritative. . . . To think that once the destinies
of the world were ruled, without appeal, by the nod of this head, which
looks now somewhat narrow, under the dry skin and the horrible whitish
hair. What force of will, of passion and colossal pride must once have
dwelt therein! Not to mention the anxiety, which to us now is scarcely
conceivable, but which in his time overmastered all others--the anxiety,
that is to say, of assuring the magnificence and inviolability of
sepulture! . . . And this horrible scarecrow, toothless and senile,
lying here in its filthy rags, with the hand raised in an impotent
menace, was once the brilliant Sesostris, the master of kings, and by
virtue of his strength and beauty the demigod also, whose muscular limbs
and deep athletic chest many colossal statues at Memphis, at Thebes, at