The box then opened of its own accord and presented to the eyes of the audience a head of cadaverous aspect, surrounded by long and abundant black hair.  It slowly opened its eyes and looked around the whole audience.  Those eyes had a vivid radiance, accentuated by their cavernous sockets, and, as if deep were calling unto deep, fixed themselves upon the profound, sunken eyes of the trembling Padre Salvi, who was staring unnaturally, as though he saw a ghost.

“Sphinx,” commanded Mr. Leeds, “tell the audience who you are.”

A deep silence prevailed, while a chill wind blew through the room and made the blue flames of the sepulchral lamps flicker.  The most skeptical shivered.

“I am Imuthis,” declared the head in a funereal, but strangely menacing, voice.  “I was born in the time of Amasis and died under the Persian domination, when Cambyses was returning from his disastrous expedition into the interior of Libya.  I had come to complete my education after extensive travels through Greece, Assyria, and Persia, and had returned to my native laud to dwell in it until Thoth should call me before his terrible tribunal.  But to my undoing, on passing through Babylonia, I discovered an awful secret—­the secret of the false Smerdis who usurped the throne, the bold Magian Gaumata who governed as an impostor.  Fearing that I would betray him to Cambyses, he determined upon my ruin through the instrumentality of the Egyptian priests, who at that time ruled my native country.  They were the owners of two-thirds of the land, the monopolizers of learning, they held the people down in ignorance and tyranny, they brutalized them, thus making them fit to pass without resistance from one domination to another.  The invaders availed themselves of them, and knowing their usefulness, protected and enriched them.  The rulers not only depended on their will, but some were reduced to mere instruments of theirs.  The Egyptian priests hastened to execute Gaumata’s orders, with greater zeal from their fear of me, because they were afraid that I would reveal their impostures to the people.  To accomplish their purpose, they made use of a young priest of Abydos, who passed for a saint.”

A painful silence followed these words.  That head was talking of priestly intrigues and impostures, and although referring to another age and other creeds, all the friars present were annoyed, possibly because they could see in the general trend of the speech some analogy to the existing situation.  Padre Salvi was in the grip of convulsive shivering; he worked his lips and with bulging eyes followed the gaze of the head as though fascinated.  Beads of sweat began to break out on his emaciated face, but no one noticed this, so deeply absorbed and affected were they.

“What was the plot concocted by the priests of your country against you?” asked Mr. Leeds.

The head uttered a sorrowful groan, which seemed to come from the bottom of the heart, and the spectators saw its eyes, those fiery eyes, clouded and filled with tears.  Many shuddered and felt their hair rise.  No, that was not an illusion, it was not a trick:  the head was the victim and what it told was its own story.