“Where shall we put it?” said Myrto.
“Near the god.”
“Where is the statue? I have never been in here before. I was afraid of the tombs and the inscriptions. I do not know the Hermanubis. It is probably in the centre of the little garden. Let us look for it. I once came here before when I was a child, in quest of a lost gazelle. Let us follow the alley of white sycamores. We cannot fail to discern it.”
Nor did they fail to find it.
Dawn mingled its delicate violets with the moonbeams on the monuments. A vague and distant harmony floated in the cypress branches. The regular rustling of the palms, so similar to tiny drops of falling rain, cast an illusion of freshness.
Timon opened with difficulty a pink stone imbedded in the earth. The sepulture was excavated beneath the hands of the funerary god, whose attitude was that of the embalmer. It must have contained a body, formerly; but at present nothing was to be found but a handful of brownish dust.
They passed the limp body to Timon.
The young man jumped into the grave, as far as his waist, and held out his arms:
“Give it to me,” he said to Myrto. “I am going to lay it at the far end, and we will close up the tomb again.”