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A thousand years had turned starvation into luxury, and alas! if the spoilers of the Reformation are to be believed, had converted visions of loveliness into breathing and blushing realities, who exercised their charms with better effect than of old their phantom sisters had done. The successive stages to this end may be briefly described.
Oh, what would this earth be were it all in all, and what were life if ending in the grave? Faith, thou art the crystal key opening to the spirit the glorious vision of immortality, bidding the trusting heart, when sick and weary of the dark deeds and ruthless spoilers of this lovely earth, rest on thy downy wings, and seek for peace and comfort there.
The heads of the families are sitting gravely in the market-place, the cause is heard, the compensation set, the claim awarded. Under the walls of the other city an ambush lies, like a wild beast on the watch for its prey. The unsuspecting herdsmen pass on with their flocks to the waterside; the spoilers spring from their hiding-place, and all is strife, and death, and horror, and confusion.
Their rooms are now filled with water. The pyramid of Medûm is empty, having been violated before the Ramesside age. The entrance is on the north, at about 53 feet above the sand. A set of beams and ropes still in place above the opening show that the spoilers drew the sarcophagus out of the chamber in ancient times.
He is a brave man, who verily strikes with his sword; a valiant one, who has not his equal; he springs upon the barbarians, and throws himself on the spoilers; he breaks the horns and weakens the hands, and those whom he smites cannot raise the buckler. He is fearless, and dashes the heads, and none can stand before him.
There lay the roofs before him he ran his eye from the west tower past the high lantern to the delicate tracery of the eastern apse and chapels in the hands of the spoilers; and here he sat dry-eyed and steady-mouthed looking down on it, as a man looks at a wound not yet begun to smart. It was piteously clear and still.
On the morrow all these signs of destruction became very greatly accentuated: with the passage of every hour the atmosphere became more thickly charged with smoke, more pungent with the smell of burning; clouds of black ash darkened the sky from time to time, as they were swept along upon the wings of the strong breeze; dense columns of smoke rising here and there showed where the spoilers were at work upon properties so near at hand that they could now be identified and named; while the frequent rattle and crash of rifle fire seemed to indicate that there were others who, like Don Hermoso, were not prepared to stand supinely by and see their entire possessions destroyed.
Lastly, the car is conducted to a field without the village, attended by all the young men, who beat each other and strike the air violently with long sticks. The seed thus carried out is called the share of the "evil spirits, spoilers of the seed."
There was no corn in this the Egypt of their greedy hopes. And, lest they should bring the corn with them, the spoilers found the mills everywhere wrecked. It was something new to them. It was new to Napoleon, who had so frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part smilingly with half in order to save the residue.
In the inside all was arranged so as to hide the exact place of the sarcophagus, and to baffle any spoilers whom chance or perseverance had led aright. The first point was to discover the entrance under the casing, which masked it. When the block which closed it was displaced, an inclined passage, 41.2 inches wide and 47.6 inches high, was revealed, the lower part of which was cut in the rock.
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