The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY

thousand years ago, you are here to-day all alive, and
looking so delightfully well."
"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
Scaraboeus, I was embalmed alive, as you see me at
present."
" The blood of the Scarabaeus!" exclaimed Doctor
Ponnonner.
"Yes. The Scarabaeus was the insignium, or the
'arms' of a very distinguished and very rare patrician
family. To be 'of the blood of the Scarabaeus' is
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