Carrying torches in their hands, they rushed headlong in, with shouts and cries and, except in the safe hiding-place of the nine coffins, everything was plundered, the bandages torn off, the golden trinkets snatched from the necks of the mummies.

Then, when they had sorted their booty, they walled up the entrance as before, and went their way, leaving an inextricable confusion of shrouds, of human bodies, of entrails issuing from shattered vases, of broken gods and emblems.
Afterwards, for long centuries, there was silence again, and finally, in our days, the _double_, then in its last weakness and almost non-existent, perceived the same noise of stones being unsealed by blows of pickaxes.

The third time, the living men who entered were of a race never seen before.

At first they seemed respectful and pious, only touching things gently.

But they came to plunder everything, even the nine coffins in their still inviolate hiding-place.