Page 26 (part 2)

This request, after due consideration, most readers will find it impossible to grant. The work, it has been said, is a romance, and the first thing which it makes clear is that even the addition of a thousand years to the date in the title is insufficient. It is the narrative of a man who "formed part of the expedition to Egypt," and was "an officer in the army of the genius." The reference is, of course, to Napoleon and at best the date of composition is little more than a century ago. While in Egypt, the narrator was sent upon an expedition to the Pyramids, accompanied by some mounted chasseurs. They lunched under the shadow of the "grand colossus," when they were attacked by a horde of Arabs of the desert; the comrades of the writer were slain and even he was left for dead upon the ground. On returning to consciousness, he surrendered himself to mournful reflections in the immediate anticipation of his end and delivered a valedictory address to the setting sun, when a stone was rolled back in the Pyramid, and a venerable man issued forth, who was proclaimed to be a Turk by his turban. This personage did not fail to discover the corpses which strewed the desert, nor to identify their nation. When the officer in his turn was examined, he manifested life by kissing the hand of the ancient man, who, superior to all prejudices which might have been dictated to the ordinary Mussulman by patriotism or religion, took pity on him, revived him by a wonderful cordial which put the wounded man upon his feet, and he followed his preserver into the Pyramid, wherein was the home of the ancient man and a mighty house of Magic. There were vast halls and endless galleries, subterranean chambers piled with treasures, apparitions of blazing lamps, ministering spirits innumerable, magic suppers; above all things there was the Black Pullet. In a word, diurnal life was illustrated throughout by the supernatural; it was a methodised version of Aladdin with an inner meaning by Astaroth. The sage himself proved to be the sole heir of the Magi and the makers of those Egyptian hieroglyphics which are the "despair of the learned," while, not least, he was himself in quest of an heir, for he felt that he was about to pass away. In fine, the French officer, having acquired the Turkish language by means of a grammar which had its root in sorcery, and being thus enabled to converse with his protector, which on the whole seems superfluous, seeing that his protector possessed a talisman which communicated immediate proficiency in all tongues, was instructed in the powers and wonders of twenty-two talismanic figures and the rings corresponding to these, as well as in the secret of the manufacture of the Black Pullet, which possessed more skill in gold-finding than the divining rod in the discovery of water. After these instructions, in spite of many prayers, and the ministries of the genius Odous , the just man expired upon a sofa, while the fortunate kinsman in philosophy swooned at the feet of his benefactor. In due course, accompanied by the genius who had been transferred to his service, the French officer managed to depart from Egypt, laden with treasures, and with the ashes of the sage in a costly urn. He took ship for Marseilles, stilled a tempest on the voyage and returned to his native country. He made his abode in Provence, spending his days in experiments with the Black Pullet, or in study, meditation and rambling. He undertook at length to write this memorial of his good fortune, in which he threatens the publishers of any pirated edition to adorn them, by means of a talisman, with ears six inches longer than those of Midas. But this does not seem to have prevented the publishers.