As the right arm was
freed from its artificially tightened grasp a peculiar wooden cylinder
rolled on to the floor into the heap of scented mummy dust and bandages.
Languidly inquisitive, Professor Lachsyrma groped for it. Such objects
are generally found beneath the head. There was a seal at each end, both
of which he broke. A roll of papyrus was inside. He trembled, and with
forced deliberation made for the table, his knees tottering from
exhaustion. Excitement at this unexpected discovery made him forget
Carrel. The ghastly events of the evening were for the moment blotted
from his memory. After all, he was a palaeographer--an archaeologist
first, a murderer afterwards. Eagerly, painfully, he began to read,
adjusting his spectacles from time to time, the muscles of his face
twitching with anxiety and expectation. For a long time the words were
strange to him. Suddenly his glasses became dim. There were tears in
his eyes; he was reading aloud, unconsciously to himself, the beautiful
verses familiar to all students of Greek poetry:--
[Greek verse]
and to students of English, in the marvellous, rendering of them by the
late Mr. Rossetti:
'Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
A-top on the topmost twig,--which the pluckers forgot, somehow,--
Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.'
The papyrus was of great length, and contained the poems of Sappho in a
cursive literary handwriting of the third century--the real poems, lost
to the world for over eight hundred years.
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