Then they grew silent since after all it was solemn to see those death-bearing priests flitting in and out between the great columns, now seen and now lost in the shadows, and to listen to their funeral chants.
In the hush my mother whispered to me that this body was that of the last Pharaoh of Egypt brought from his tomb, but whether this were so I cannot say for certain.

At length they brought the mummy which was crowned with a snake-headed circlet of the royal _uraeus_ and still draped with withered funeral wreaths, and stood it on its feet opposite to Peroa just behind and between my mother and me in such a fashion that it cut off the light from us.
The faint and heavy smell of the embalmer's spices struck upon my nostrils, a dead flower from the chaplets fell upon my head and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw the painted or enamelled eyes in the gilded mask staring at me.

The thing filled me with fear, I knew not of what.

Not of death, surely, for that I had faced a score of times of late and thought nothing of it.

Indeed I am not sure that it was fear I felt, but rather a deep sense of the vanity of all things.