The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as a crystal bell:
“Well, my dear little foot, you flee from me always, though I have taken good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a basin of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with oil of palms; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select sandals for you, broidered and painted and turned up at the toes, which made all the young girls in Egypt envious; you wore on your great toe rings representing the sacred Scarabæus, and you carried about the lightest body it was possible for a lazy foot to sustain.”
The foot replied, in a tone pouting and chagrined:
“You well know that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have been bought and paid for. The old merchant knew perfectly what he was doing; he always bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him: this is an ill turn which he has done you. The Arab who robbed your royal sarcophagus in the subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent by him: he desired to prevent you from going to the reunion of the shadowy peoples in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?”
“Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, were all stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sigh.
“Princess,” I then exclaimed, “I never retained anybody’s foot unjustly; even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me, I give it to you gladly: I should be in despair to make so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis lame.”
I delivered this discourse in a tone so royal and gallant that it must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian.
She turned toward me a look charged with gratitude, and her eyes shone with bluish gleams.
She took her foot—which, this time, let itself be taken—like a woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with much address.
This operation ended, she took two or three steps about the room, as if to assure herself that she really was no longer lame.