M. Raindal complacently commented upon this panorama. Mme. Chambannes gushed over it all, finding everything either charming or pretty. When he had finished, he pointed out the garden next to their house.
“It is the garden of the Visitandine Sisters of Notre-Dame-du-Saint-Rosaire.... See, there are two of our neighbors out for a walk!”
Mme. Chambannes bent forward to look at them. They walked one behind the other around the enclosure of brown earth. They held chaplets in their hands that were red with cold, and let the beads slip one by one. Their bonnets were bent down and hid their faces. One of them, thin and light, seemed young; the other was stouter and appeared old. Both had the square, unshapely waist which the bands of their aprons mark on the corsetless flesh of nuns. Mme. Chambannes examined them in silence for a few seconds, but thought it wiser not to ask what it was these holy sisters were doing with their rosaries. She turned round and, perceiving a glass case set up against the wall, near the window, exclaimed.
“Oh, the pretty things! what charming little mummies!... They seem to be asleep standing up....”
She pointed out the middle shelf where peacock blue, pale green and white china statuettes stood in rows. All wore the Egyptian headdress that fell down on their shoulders like manes. Their eyes were black lines above squat noses which were in several cases worn out at the tip. There were inscriptions all down their bodies even to the feet, which were swollen like those of gouty people. Some had their arms crossed in front. Others showed only their hands as if they had bathing gowns on. The sand of the desert had stuck to many of them, leaving upon them the mark of its centuries-old atoms.
M. Raindal explained the use of those statues. They had been placed in the tombs in order to help the dead in their labors in the other life. He then gave Mme. Chambannes the names of the divinities on the shelf above: Hathor the cow-headed, jackal-headed Anubis, hawk-headed Horus, Osiris, the god of the netherworld, with his huge tiara; Thueris, a frightful idol with the head of a hippopotamus and a woma breast, who was, it was thought, consecrated to motherhood or to preserving people from ill-luck. The master spoke of them all tenderly and volubly as if he had imagined them and made them himself with his own hands. Well, had he not created them? Had he not given them life when he tore them one by one from the Nothingness of the sands or the depths of the tombs? The scarabs of colored stones were also, every one of them, his own discoveries. He had put a pin through them and laid them side by side on white grooves as one does with a collection of real insects. Near these scarabs there was a case in which had been thrown three heavy gold rings, their bezels engraved with hieroglyphics, which had doubtless been worn on the dry, yellow fingers of imperious Pharaohs.
“All these things are terribly old, are they not?” Mme. Chambannes asked.
“It depends,” M. Raindal replied. “On an average, they date back 3000, perhaps 4000 or 5000 years!”
“Really!... And if I went to Egypt, next year ... I could find some like these?...”
“It is possible ... if one digs deep enough.... The desert is chock full of them!”