"Oh, there are plenty of people who knew all about it; but such stories get packed away like old letters. They interest me. I like to know the manners of my time--contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. These Dryasdust fellows get a reputation by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis or Nitocris, and then we have a thousand and one poems written upon it by all the warblers big and little. But I don't care a straw about the _faux pas_ of the mummies. You do, though. You are one of the historical men--more interested in a lady when she's got a rag face and skeleton toes peeping out. Does that flatter your imagination?"
