My School-Days | Page 8

of more ordinary terrors-of dreams from which to awaken was mere relief; not a horror scarcely less than that of the dream itself. I dreamed of cows and dogs, of falling houses, and crumbling precipices. It was not till that night at Rouen that the old horror of the dark came back, deepened by superstitious dread.
But all this time I have not told you about the mummies at Bordeaux. And now there is no room for them here. They must go into the next chapter.

PART V.
THE MUMMIES AT BORDEAUX
IT was because I was tired of churches and picture-galleries, of fairs and markets, of the strange babble of foreign tongues and the thin English of the guide-book, that I begged so hard to be taken to see the mummies. To me the name of a mummy was as a friend's name. As one Englishman travelling across a desert seeks to find another of whom he has heard in that far land, so I sought to meet these mummies who had cousins at home, in the British Museum, in dear, dear England.
My fancy did not paint mummies for me apart from plate-glass cases, camphor, boarded galleries, and kindly curators, and I longed to see them as I longed to see home, and to hear my own tongue spoken about me.
I was consumed by a fever of impatience for the three days which had to go by before the coming of the day on which the treasures might be visited. My sisters who were to lead me to these delights, believed too that the mummies would be chiefly interesting on account of their association with Bloomsbury.
Well, we went--I in my best blue silk frock, which I insisted on wearing to honour the occasion, holding the hand of my sister and positively skipping with delicious anticipation. There was some delay about keys, during which my excitement was scarcely to be restrained. Then we went through an arched doorway and along a flagged passage, the old man who guided us explaining volubly in French as we went.
"What does he say?"
"He says they are natural mummies."
"What does that mean?"
"They are not embalmed by- man, like the Egyptian ones, but simply by the peculiar earth of the churchyard where they were buried."
The words did not touch my conception of the glass cases and their good-natured guardian.
The passage began to slope downward. A chill air breathed on our faces, bringing with if a damp earthy smell. Then we came to some narrow stone steps. Our guide spoke again.
"What does he say?"
"We are to be careful, the steps are slippery and mouldy."
I think even then my expectation still was of a long clean gallery, filled with the white light of a London noon, shed through high skylights on Egyptian treasures. But the stairs were dark, and I held my sister's hand tightly. Down we went, down, down!
"What does he say?"
"We are under the church now; these are the vaults."
We went along another passage, the damp mouldy smell increasing, and my clasp of my sister's hand grew closer and closer.
We stopped in front of a heavy door barred with iron, and our guide turned a big reluctant key in a lock that grated.
"Les voila," he said, throwing open the door and drawing back dramatically.
We were in the room before my sisters had time to see cause for regretting that they had brought me.
The vision of dry boards and white light and glass cases vanished, and in its stead I saw this:
A small vault, as my memory serves me, about fifteen feet square, with an arched roof, from the centre of which hung a lamp that burned with a faint blue light, and made the guide's candle look red and lurid. The floor was flagged like the passages, and was as damp and chill. Round three sides of the room ran a railing, and behind it--standing against the wall, with a ghastly look of life in death--were about two hundred skeletons. Not white clean skeletons, hung on wires, like the one yon see at the doctor's, but skeletons with the flesh hardened on their bones, with their long dry hair hanging on each side of their brown faces, where the skin in drying had drawn itself back from their gleaming teeth and empty eye-sockets. Skeletons draped in mouldering shreds of shrouds and grave-clothes, their lean fingers still clothed with dry skin, seemed to reach out towards me. There they stood, men, women, and children, knee-deep in loose bones collected from the other vaults of the church, and heaped round them. On the wall near the door I saw the dried body of a little child hung up by its hair.
I don't think I screamed or cried, or even said a word. I think I was paralysed with horror, but I remember