Amongst these mummy cases and these coffin lids fashioned in the shape of the human figure, there are some that seem to have been made for giants; the head especially, beneath its cumbrous head-dress, the head stuffed as it were between the hunchback shoulders, looks enormous, out of all proportion to the body which, towards the feet, narrows like a scabbard.
Although our little lantern maintains its light we seem to see here less and less: the darkness around us in these vast rooms becomes almost overpowering--and these are the rooms, too, that, leading one into the other, facilitate the midnight promenade of those dread "forms" which, every evening, are released and roam about.

.

.

.
On a table in the middle of one of these rooms a thing to make you shudder gleams in a glass box, a fragile thing that failed of life some two thousand years ago.

It is the mummy of a human embryo, and someone, to appease the malice of this born-dead thing, had covered its face with a coating of gold--for, according to the belief of the Egyptians, these little abortions became the evil genii of their families if proper honour was not paid to them.