"Some Words With a Mummy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

little villain, Doctor Ponnonner, in pulling me by the nose?"
It will be taken for granted, no doubt, that upon hearing this
speech under the circumstances, we all either made for the door, or
fell into violent hysterics, or went off in a general swoon. One of
these three things was, I say, to be expected. Indeed each and all
of these lines of conduct might have been very plausibly pursued. And,
upon my word, I am at a loss to know how or why it was that we pursued
neither the one nor the other. But, perhaps, the true reason is to
be sought in the spirit of the age, which proceeds by the rule of
contraries altogether, and is now usually admitted as the solution
of every thing in the way of paradox and impossibility. Or, perhaps,
after all, it was only the Mummy's exceedingly natural and
matter-of-course air that divested his words of the terrible.
However this may be, the facts are clear, and no member of our party
betrayed any very particular trepidation, or seemed to consider that
any thing had gone very especially wrong.
For my part I was convinced it was all right, and merely stepped
aside, out of the range of the Egyptian's fist. Doctor Ponnonner
thrust his hands into his breeches' pockets, looked hard at the Mummy,
and grew excessively red in the face. Mr. Glidden stroked his whiskers
and drew up the collar of his shirt. Mr. Buckingham hung down his
head, and put his right thumb into the left corner of his mouth.
The Egyptian regarded him with a severe countenance for some minutes
and at length, with a sneer, said:
"Why don't you speak, Mr. Buckingham? Did you hear what I asked you,
or not? Do take your thumb out of your mouth!"
Mr. Buckingham, hereupon, gave a slight start, took his right
thumb out of the left corner of his mouth, and, by way of
indemnification inserted his left thumb in the right corner of the
aperture above-mentioned.
Not being able to get an answer from Mr. B., the figure turned
peevishly to Mr. Gliddon, and, in a peremptory tone, demanded in
general terms what we all meant.
Mr. Gliddon replied at great length, in phonetics; and but for the
deficiency of American printing-offices in hieroglyphical type, it
would afford me much pleasure to record here, in the original, the
whole of his very excellent speech.
I may as well take this occasion to remark, that all the
subsequent conversation in which the Mummy took a part, was carried on
in primitive Egyptian, through the medium (so far as concerned
myself and other untravelled members of the company)- through the
medium, I say, of Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, as interpreters.
These gentlemen spoke the mother tongue of the Mummy with inimitable
fluency and grace; but I could not help observing that (owing, no
doubt, to the introduction of images entirely modern, and, of
course, entirely novel to the stranger) the two travellers were
reduced, occasionally, to the employment of sensible forms for the
purpose of conveying a particular meaning. Mr. Gliddon, at one period,
for example, could not make the Egyptian comprehend the term
"politics," until he sketched upon the wall, with a bit of charcoal