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 kid gloves, an eye-glass, a pair of
      whiskers, and a waterfall cravat. Owing to the disparity of size between
      the Count and the doctor (the proportion being as two to one), there was
      some little difficulty 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! 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 illusion 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 any thing 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.”


      “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 Scarabaeus, 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 merely to be one of that family of which the Scarabaeus is
      the insignium. I speak figuratively.”


      “But what has this to do with you 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 Scarabaei alone did
      not coincide with the custom. Had I not been a Scarabeus, therefore, I
      should have been without bowels and brains; and without either it is
      inconvenient to live.”


      “I perceive that,” said Mr. Buckingham, “and I presume that all the entire
      mummies that come to hand are of the race of Scarabaei.”


      “Beyond doubt.”


      “I thought,” said Mr. Gliddon, very meekly, “that the Scarabaeus was one
      of the Egyptian gods.”


      “One of the Egyptian _what?”_ exclaimed the Mummy, starting to its
      feet. “Gods!” repeated the traveller. “Mr. 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 Scarabaeus, the Ibis, etc., were
      with us (as similar creatures have been with others) the symbols, or
      media, through which we offered worship to the 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
      Scarabaeus tribe, in a condition of vitality?”


      “There can be no question of it,” replied the Count; “all the Scarabaei
      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 tomb.”


      “Will you be kind enough to explain,” I said, “what you mean by ‘purposely
      so 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,” he said. “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 considered the natural term.