Page:"The Mummy" Volume 2.djvu/82

74 in death, still retained their native expression of majestic dignity.

Immense tapers of an enormous thickness lighted the sombre walls, hung with black cloth; whilst chorister boys walked up and down chanting hymns in honour of the deceased, and flinging incense in the air from silver vessels suspended by silver chains, which they carried in their hands; thus shedding fragrance around, and chasing the fearful odour of mortality even from the very chamber of death. Priests wrapped in funeral garments also slowly paraded the room, muttering prayers, and joining occasionally their full, deep-toned voices with the shriller chant of the boys. The space where the public were admitted, was railed off from the lower end of the hall; but near the body knelt a beautiful female arrayed in black velvet, and her fair face and arms shaded by a veil of black crape. "O Osiris!" cried a figure wrapped in a long dark cloak, grasping the arm of Father Morris, "who is that lovely creature? There, bending over the last awful relics of mortality,