‘What did they understand by transmigration?’
‘Transmigration.’
‘Yes,—but of the soul or of the body?’
‘How do you mean?—transmigration is transmigration. Are you driving at something in particular? If you’ll tell me fairly and squarely what it is I’ll do my best to give you the information you require; as it is, your questions are a bit perplexing.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,—as you say, “transmigration is transmigration.”’ I was eyeing him keenly; I seemed to detect in his manner an odd reluctance to enlarge on the subject he himself had started. He continued to trifle with the retort upon the table. ‘Hadn’t the followers of Isis a—what shall I say?—a sacred emblem?’
‘How?’
‘Hadn’t they an especial regard for some sort of a—wasn’t it some sort of a—beetle?’
‘You mean Scarabaeus sacer,—according to Latreille, Scarabaeus Egyptiorum? Undoubtedly,—the scarab was venerated throughout Egypt,—indeed, speaking generally, most things that had life, for instance, cats; as you know, Orisis continued among men in the figure of Apis, the bull.’
‘Weren’t the priests of Isis—or some of them—supposed to assume, after death, the form of a—scarabaeus?’
‘I never heard of it.’