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 Thus they visited room after room, and through all the variety of occupations in which the miserable women were engaged, the same features were conspicuous. Their labour was, without exception, either most irksome, most useless, most trifling, or else degrading, and yet it evidently required the highest degree of cunning and perseverance.

In appearance, many of the women had been made physically most repulsive,—some maimed, some blind, some almost shapeless with distortion; and those whose bodies had escaped, had been deformed to a much worse extent in mind. Without exception they shuddered on the entry of the masks, and showed their terror in the most undisguised manner. Apparently Thoth tried to take away their fears, and to inform them that for the future they would live happily; but they listened with dull incredulity, and seemed quite hopeless.