Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems. Эдгар Аллан По
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his instruments.
In regard to the latter suggestions of the orator, it appears that Allamistakeo had certain scruples of conscience, the nature of which I did not distinctly learn; but he expressed himself satisfied with the apologies tendered, and, getting down from the table, shook hands with the company all round.
When this ceremony was at an end, we immediately busied ourselves in repairing the damages which our subject had sustained from the scalpel. We sewed up the wound in his temple, bandaged his foot, and applied a square inch of black plaster to the tip of his nose.
It was now observed that the Count, (this was the title, it seems, of Allamistakeo,) had a slight fit of shivering—no doubt from the cold. The doctor immediately repaired to his wardrobe, and soon returned with a black dress coat, made in Jennings’ best manner, a pair of sky-blue plaid pantaloons with straps, a pink gingham chemise, a flapped vest of brocade, a white sack overcoat, a walking cane with a hook, a hat with no brim, patent-leather boots, straw-colored ·1186· kid gloves, an eye-glass, a pair of whiskers, and a waterfall cravat. Owing to the disparity of size between the Count and doctor, (the proportion being as two to one,) there was some little difficulty [C°: diffi-] in adjusting these habiliments upon the person of the Egyptian; but when all was arranged, he might have been said to be dressed. Mr. Gliddon, therefore, gave him his arm, and led him to a comfortable chair by the fire, while the doctor rang the bell upon the spot and ordered a supply of cigars and wine.
The conversation soon grew animated. Much curiosity was, of course, expressed in regard to the somewhat remarkable fact of Allamistakeo’s still remaining alive.
“I should have thought,” observed Mr. Buckingham, “that it is high time you were dead.”
“Why,” replied the Count, very much astonished, “I am little more than seven hundred years old. [C,E: old!] My father lived a thousand, and was by no means in his dotage when he died.”
Here ensued a brisk series of questions and computations, by means of which it became evident that the antiquity of the Mummy had been grossly misjudged. It had been five thousand and fifty years, and some months, since he had been consigned to the catacombs at Eleithias.
“But my remark,” resumed Mr. Buckingham, “had no reference to your age at the period of interment; (I am willing to grant, in fact, that you are still a young man,) and my allusion was to the immensity of time during which, by your own showing, you must have been done up in asphaltum.”
“In what?” said the Count.
“In asphaltum,” persisted Mr. B.
“Ah, yes; I have some faint notion of what you mean; it might be made to answer, no doubt,—but in my time we employed scarcely anything else than the Bichloride of Mercury.”
“But what we are especially at a loss to understand,” said Doctor Ponnonner, “is how it happens that, having been dead and buried in Egypt five thousand years ago, you are here to-day all alive, and looking so delightfully well.”
·1187· “Had I been, as you say, dead,” replied the Count, “it is more than probable that dead I should still be; for I perceive you are yet in the infancy of Galvanism, and cannot accomplish with it what was a common thing among us in the old days. But the fact is, I fell into catalepsy, and it was considered by my best friends that I was either dead or should be; they accordingly embalmed me at once—I presume you are aware of the chief principle of the embalming process?”
“Why, not altogether.”
“Ah, I perceive;—a deplorable condition of ignorance! Well, I cannot enter into details just now: but it is necessary to explain that to embalm, (properly speaking,) in Egypt, was to arrest indefinitely all the animal functions subjected to the process. I use the word “animal” in its widest sense, as including the physical not more than the moral and vital being. I repeat that the leading principle of embalmment consisted, with us, in the immediately arresting, and holding in perpetual abeyance, all the animal functions subjected to the process. To be brief, in whatever condition the individual was, at the period of embalmment, in that condition he remained. Now, as it is my good fortune to be of the blood of the Scarabæus, I was embalmed alive, as you see me at present.”
“The blood of the Scarabæus!” exclaimed Doctor Ponnonner.
“Yes. The Scarabæus was the insignium, or the “arms,” of a very distinguished and a very rare patrician family. To be “of the blood of the Scarabæus,” is merely to be one of that family of which the Scarabæus is the insignium. I speak figuratively.”
“But what has this to do with your being alive?”
“Why it is the general custom, in Egypt, to deprive a corpse, before embalmment, of its bowels and brains; the race of the Scarabæi alone did not coincide with the custom. Had I not been a Scarabæus, therefore, I should have been without bowels and brains; and without either it is inconvenient to live.”
·1188· “I perceive that;” said Mr. Buckingham, “and I presume that all the entire mummies that come to hand are of the race of Scarabæi.”
“Beyond doubt.”
“I thought,” said Mr. Gliddon very meekly, “that the Scarabæus was one of the Egyptian gods.”
“One of the Egyptian what?” exclaimed the Mummy, starting to its feet.
“Gods!” repeated the traveler.
“Mr. Gliddon, [C°: Gliddon] I really am astonished to hear you talk in this style,” said the Count, resuming his chair. “No nation upon the face of the earth has ever acknowledged more than one god. The Scarabæus, the Ibis, etc., were with us, (as similar creatures have been with others) the symbols, or media, through which we offered worship to a Creator too august to be more directly approached.”
There was here a pause. At length the colloquy was renewed by Doctor Ponnonner.
“It is not improbable, then, from what you have explained,” said he, “that among the catacombs near the Nile, there may exist other mummies of the Scarabæus tribe, in a condition of vitality.”
“There can be no question of it,” replied the Count; “all [C°: all] the Scarabæi embalmed accidentally while alive, are alive now. Even some of those purposely so embalmed, may have been overlooked by their executors, and still remain in the tombs.”
“Will you be kind enough to explain,” I said, “what you mean by ‘purposely so embalmed’?” [C°: embalmed?’”]
“With great pleasure,” answered the Mummy, after surveying me leisurely through his eye-glass—for it was the first time I had ventured to address him a direct question.
“With great pleasure,” said he. “The usual duration of man’s life, in my time, was about eight hundred years. Few men died, unless by most extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer than a decade of centuries; but eight were ·1189· considered the natural term. After the discovery of the embalming principle, as I have already described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of science much advanced, by living this natural term in instalments. In the case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of this kind was indispensable. An historian, for example, having attained the age of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then get himself carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors pro tem., that they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of a certain period—say five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at the expiration of this term, he would invariably find his great work converted into a species of hap-hazard note-book—that is to say, into a kind of literary arena for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles of whole herds of exasperated commentators. These guesses, etc., which passed under the name of annotations or emendations, were found so completely to have