No More Learning

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 Calvanism, 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. "

"Why, 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.