_The Essay,_ Mortis Imago, _will occupy, as nearly as I can at
present calculate, two volumes, the ninth and tenth, of the collected
papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius_.

_This Essay, I may remark in conclusion, is very curiously enriched by
citations, in great abundance, from medieval verse and prose romance,
some of the most valuable of which, strange to say, are Egyptian_.

_I have selected this particular statement from among many cases
equally striking, but hardly, I think, so effective as mere narratives;
in this irregular form of publication, it is simply as a story that I
present it_.




Chapter I

ON THE ROAD


In the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly three-and-twenty, and had just
succeeded to a very large sum in consols and other securities. The first
fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists,
anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and
I--the slight check of the "hundred days" removed, by the genius of
Wellington, on the field of Waterloo--was now added to the philosophic
throng.

I was posting up to Paris from Brussels, following, I presume, the route