and everywhere around upon the desert sands was street upon street of
monuments, but save for a priest or two hurrying to patter his paid
office in the funeral chapels of the departed, never a living man. Bes
looked about him and sniffed with his wide nostrils.

"Is there not death enough in the world, Master," he asked, "that the
living should wish to proclaim it in this fashion, rolling it on their
tongues like a morsel they are loth to swallow, because it tastes so
good? Oh! what a waste is here. All these have had their day and yet
they need houses and pyramids and painted chambers in which to sleep,
whereas if they believed the faith they practised, they would have
been content to give their bones to feed the earth they fed on, and
fill heaven with their souls."

"Do your people thus, Bes?"

"For the most part, Master. Our dead kings and great ones we enclose
in pillars of crystal, but we do this that they may serve a double
purpose. One is that the pillars may support the roof of their
successors, and the other, that those who inherit their goods may
please themselves by reflecting how much handsomer they are than those
who went before them. For no mummy looks really nice, Master, at least
with its wrappings off, and our kings are put naked into the crystal."

"And what becomes of the rest, Bes?"

"Their bodies go to the earth or the water and the Grasshopper carries
off their souls to--where, Master?"

"I do not know, Bes."