SOLD FOR AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 182, 22 September 1876, Page 13

SOLD FOR AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY.

We find in the ' Miner ve' of Montreal, the following clipping from a French paper : " About two years ago there died in Paris a wealthy Peruvian named Don Miguel de Cerdas. Immediately after the death, of Don Miguel, his brother, named Don Augustino, applied to an embalmer of the Rue St. Ferdinand, M. Carpentier, to have the body embalmed. The price, $1,500, having been agreed upon, M. Carpentier, furnished with the necessary permit, had the remains taken to his establishment in order to proceed with the embalming. But it so happened that on the very day that the process was completed Don Augustino received a despatch from his own country which obliged him to leave Paris immediately. The news he had received from home so wholly engrossed his attention that he embarked, troubling himself no more about his brother, and saying to himself that M. Carpentier would, of course, bury the remains, and he could pay the bill on his return.

" Nearly two years had passed before Don- Augustino returned to Paris, and it was only a few weeks since that he presented himself to M. Carpentier, making all sorts of excuses, asked him for his bill, and requested to be shown the place where his brother was interred. M. Carpentier appeared very much embarrassed, stammered and hesitated, and at last confessed that, despairing of ever seeing Don Augustino again, he had sold the embalmed body to pay himself for his trouble. 'How! sold?' cried Don Augustino, angry and amazed. ' Why, my brother's body had no value for any one but me.' 'I'll tell you how it was,' groaned the terrified embalmerj 'I bound the body up in bands to make it look Egyptianlike, and sold it for a"mummy, as one of the ministers of Sesostris. Why did you leave me so long without hearing from you ? ' " Don Augustino, repressing his anger as well as he could, asked the embalmer to whom he had sold the pretended mummy. "•I do not know his name/ stammered M. Carpentier; 'he was an Englishman ' " That was all that could be elicited from him. A complaint was lodged by Don Augustino against the embalmer, and when om ce the affair is decided by the court the Peruvian will go in search o l the fraternal mummy."