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"
There can be no question of it," replied the Count; "all the Scarabaei
embalmed accidentally while alive, are alive now. Even some of those
purposely so embalmed, may have been overlooked by their executors, and
still remain in the tomb."
"
Will you be kind enough to explain," I said, "what you mean by
'purposely so embalmed'?"
"
With great pleasure!" answered the Mummy, after surveying me leisurely
through his eye-glass--for it was the first time I had ventured to
address him a direct question.
"With great pleasure," he said. "The usual duration of man's life, in
my time, was about eight hundred years. Few men died, unless by most
extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer
than a decade of centuries; but eight were considered the natural
term. After the discovery of the embalming principle, as I have already
described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable
curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of
science much advanced, by living this natural term in installments. In
the case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of
this kind was indispensable. An historian, for example, having attained
the age of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then
get himself carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors
pro tem., that they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of
a certain period--say five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at
143
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