It was a young girl, of a deep café-au-lait complexion, like the bayadere[1] Amani, of a perfect beauty, and recalling the purest Egyptian type. She had almond eyes with the corners raised, and brows so black that they seemed blue; her nose was delicately chiselled, almost Grecian in its fineness of outline, and indeed she might have been taken for a statue of Corinthian bronze had not the prominence of the cheekbones and the slightly African lips made it impossible not to recognize her as belonging beyond doubt to the hieroglyphic race of the banks of the Nile.
Her arms, slender and turned with the symmetry of a spindle—like those of very young girls—were encircled by a kind of metal bands and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was plaited in cords; and upon her bosom was suspended a little idol of green paste, which, from its bearing a whip with seven lashes, enabled one to recognize it as an image of Isis, conductress of spirits. A disk of gold scintillated upon her brow, and a few traces of rouge relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks.
As for her costume, it was very strange. Imagine an under-wrapping of linen strips, bedizened with black and red hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.
In one of those flights of thought so frequent in dreams, I heard the rough falsetto of the bric-à-brac dealer, which repeated like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with an intonation so enigmatical:
“Old Pharaoh will not be pleased—he loved his daughter, that dear man!”
Strange circumstance—and one which scarcely reassured me—the apparition had but one foot; the other was broken off at the ankle!
She approached the desk where the foot was moving and wriggling with redoubled liveliness. Once there, she supported herself upon the edge, and I saw tears form and grow pearly in her eyes.
Although she had not as yet spoken, I clearly discerned her thoughts: she looked at her foot—for it was indeed her own—with an infinitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but the foot leaped and coursed hither and yon, as though driven by steel springs.
Two or three times she extended her hand to seize it, but she did not succeed.
Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot—which appeared to be endowed with a life of its own—a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic dialect, such as might have been spoken some thirty centuries ago by voices of the land of Ser: luckily, that night I understood Coptic to perfection.